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About Illinois Valley news. (Cave City, Oregon) 1937-current | View Entire Issue (April 30, 2003)
Page 14 Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, OR Wednesday, April 30, 2003 Failure to pay premiums stop health benefits As a result of failure to pay premiums for March, Feb- ruary or both, approximately 10,400 low-income Oregon Health Plan clients will be without health-care coverage beginning Thursday, May 1, said Oregon Dept. of Human Services. The affected adults are covered by the Health Plan's Standard benefit package, which, was instituted Feb. 1 with required premiums and somewhat slimmer benefits. OSU computer graphics trains professionals Imagine climbing in through the screen of a com- puter running a 3-D animated football game. You stand up on the other side to find yourself sur- rounded by an animated field with players that look so real you drop and curl into the fe- tal position when the defen- sive line swarms you, and the crowd noise goes deafening. If Ron Metoyer, Oregon State University (OSU) at Corvallis assistant professor of computer science has his way, future college quarter- backs will use the technology he's developing to train in just this way. But Metoyer's research using computer graphics tech- nology to create large, "immersive environments" the size of two-car garages goes well beyond the gridiron. Metoyer, a second-year faculty member in the OSU College of Engineering, hopes his research also will result in realistic-looking training envi- ronments. In these environments, firefighters, security person- nel, soldiers and others can train -- by moving, spinning, reacting, climbing, running and rolling -- in large rooms where computer animations are projected on walls and ceilings to simulate real-world fires, building evacuations, battlefields, and more. In March, the National Science Foundation took no- tice of Metoyer's research, awarding him a prestigious Faculty Early Career Develop- ment (CAREER) award worth $493,672 over five years. The funding will support Metoyer and several graduate students in the OSU School of Electri- cal Engineering and Computer Science. "I'm very excited about the CAREER award," Me- toyer said. "I worked hard to put together an exciting pro- posal, and I'm glad the NSF reviewers felt it was worthy of support. The OSU Computer Science Dept. has been com- pletely supportive and has created an environment for new faculty to succeed. And the students have been out- standing -- at both the gradu- ate and undergraduate levels." Metoyer received his doc- torate from the College of Computing at the Georgia In- stitute of Technology in 2001 where he was a member of the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center. WORD OF THE WEEK chalone (pronounced with a hard ‘c’) An endocrine secretion that depresses or inhibits physiological activity. (Random House Webster’s College Dictionary) Please don’t drink and drive.
