March 2007

What's going on at Ohio State?

The Buckeyes make sports history. Experts identify the best veggies. The Wilds conservation center provides opportunities for Ohio State research. An Ohio State supercouple spends time in Africa. The Ohio State grads behind Ice Age enjoy critical acclaim. Researchers determine how to get dishes the cleanest. An Ohio State grad and his wife give the university more than $5 million. And a study links early sexual activity with delinquency.

Two in a row

The women's team has won its third straight Big Ten title; the men's is better than it has been since the early 1960s.

The icing on the cake? The teams have made Big Ten history: For the first time ever, a school in the conference holds outright conference titles in football and men's and women's basketball. (Last year marked the first time a Big Ten school had ever boasted both the men's and women's basketball teams as outright conference champs.)

Find out more about the teams. And keep on top of the men's and women's schedules during March Madness.

Lettuce help you

No matter which fruits and veggies you fill a grocery cart with, you can rest assured you're doing something good for yourself.

But with grocery aisles packed with varieties of produce, you might wonder which kinds of vegetables will get you the biggest bang for your buck.

Ohio State nutrition experts can help. They have discovered which tomatoes contain the most cancer-preventing lycopene and recently offered advice on how to pick the most nutritious types of lettuce.

Into the Wilds

Looking for a fun Ohio spring break destination? Try the Wilds, a 10,000-acre conservation center that's home to 25 species from Africa, Asia, and North America.

The Wilds isn't just a great place to visit. It's also a boon to scientists, including Ohio State researchers who use the grounds for studies on prairie grass and animal parasites.

Find out more about the Wilds and Ohio State research there.

Supercouple

Ohio State researchers Bill and Ruthmarie Mitsch recently made a trip to Africa, but they weren't there just to see the sights.

Bill, a wetlands researcher, and Ruthmarie, editor of a university journal on African literature, also engaged in some research abroad.

"Since 1986 we have both been Buckeyes, he in the sciences and I in the humanities," says Ruthmarie Mitsch. "It's a real marriage of the arts and sciences."

Find out more about the Mitsches' trip and their work.

Kudos to Oscar-nominated alums

Scrat, the animated acorn-loving squirrel from Ice Age and its sequel, got some love from Hollywood last month.

No Time For Nuts, a short film that featured Scrat following an acorn through time, was one of five animated shorts nominated for an Oscar. (The award went to The Danish Poet.)

The film has Ohio State ties: The voice of Scrat was Chris Wedge, who graduated from Ohio State in 1985. A previous Oscar winner, Wedge also founded the studio that created No Time for Nuts. Another alumnus, John Donkin of the Class of 1986, produced the film.

Find out more about Wedge, Donkin, and No Time for Nuts.

Wash away the germs

You've read about E. coli in spinach and salmonella in peanut butter. But what about bacteria on dishes?

A recent study of the cleanliness of hand-washed restaurant dishes provided some useful news--like which utensil is most likely to harbor bacteria and why leftover lipstick on your glass isn't actually so bad.

Find out how to get dishes the cleanest at home.

Patrons of the arts

In the 1930s, an illness forced Larry Barnett to cut his Ohio State education short. He became head of United Television in Hollywood, then took up unfinished business and fulfilled his dream by graduating from Ohio State in 1988 at age 75.

Along with his wife, the late Tony Award winner and Broadway actress Isabel Bigley Barnett, Barnett has donated more than $5 million to Ohio State's College of the Arts.

"Our philosophy has been to help needy students who cannot afford to go to school," he says.

Read more.

Sex and delinquency

Adolescents who have sex earlier than their peers are more likely to engage in delinquent acts than teens who remain virgins until later than average, according to Ohio State researchers' national study of more than 7,000 youth.

"We're not finding that sex itself leads to delinquency, but instead, that beginning sexual relationships long before your friends is cause for concern," said Stacy Armour, one of the study's authors.

Find out more about the research.

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