The Barometer Online

Last Wednesday Terri Irwin, widow of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, signed a Memo of Understanding at the CH2M Hill Alumni Center with the Marine Mammal Institute at OSU. The agreement will allow Bruce Mate, director of the Marine Mammal Institute, to lead two humpback whale research projects to American Samoa and the Aleutian Islands.

On June 18, extravagant donor and Oregon State alumnus Martin N. Kelley died of cancer at the age of 80 in his Lake Oswego home. Kelley, who graduated from Oregon State College in 1950, made a number of contributions to the engineering department at OSU after he left.

You may have noticed a white haze in the skies over the last couple of days. This has been attributed to the wildfires taking place in northern California. Wildfires, which are commonplace for California in the summer, have become much harder to deal with than usual this year; firefighters have found great difficulty in putting them out as they have been spreading at incredible rates.

A group of scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom have recently refined an optical method to determine if organic materials can be found in the soils of Mars. The refined methodology could be used as early as 2009 on a NASA Mars rover, but it is more likely to be implemented on the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission, which will take place in 2013.

Fireworks are just as popular on the Fourth of July as are barbecues and American flags. Local fireworks stands are required to have permits from both the state and Corvallis that allow them to sell fireworks, and are also checked for proper safety measures by the Corvallis Fire Department.