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The Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center (Oregon BEST) is focused on connecting Oregon university researchers engaged in green building technologies with Oregon architects, builders and developers with the ultimate goal of creating new green products and jobs for Oregon.

Examples include: three PSU professors just received $600K to see if solar panels and green roofs can be installed in close proximity to benefit both (local companies, PGE, and City of Portland are collaborating); a UO architecture professor has designed a unique solar awning and is looking to partner with an Oregon manufacturer to produce and market this product; OSU faculty are collaborating with a Portland startup to see how under-recycled products such as styrofoam meat trays can become building insulation.

Oregon BEST is leveraging Oregon's position as an international green building leader to bring new work to Oregon's green building industry and to transform the state's green building research into new products and technologies produced by new and existing Oregon companies.

posted 4 years ago
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My novel, WHERE RIVER TURNS TO SKY (HarperCollins), which is set in a small town in Oregon's Willamette Valley, tells the story of a handful of elders who move into a rundown mansion to avoid winding up in the local nursing home. Although my book is fiction, it portrays what we could do by intentionally building community...something we've lost in our society. It used to be the extended family provided a safety net for the elders, but those nets are almost nonexistent now. My novel explores one way of rebuilding this at a grassroots level. I've had many reader say they'd like to give this a try when they're older, as a way of taking care of themselves, surrounded by other people, living in community and mutual support. One reader called it her "geriatric fantasy."

posted 4 years, 1 month ago
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One of Oregon's three signature research centers, The Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center (Oregon BEST), is focused on growing Oregon's R&D capacity at our state's research universities as a way of fueling Oregon's green economy. Oregon BEST facilitates collaboration between Oregon's academic researchers and Oregon's business community to create economic impact in the areas of renewable energy and green building. As federal stimulus funding flows to Oregon, Oregon BEST will help transform the funding targeted at renewable energy into new technologies, services, and companies that will ultimately create new jobs for Oregonians. Read more about Oregon BEST at http://oregonbest.org

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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