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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.