Dr Douglas Kennett of the University of Oregon, Eugene, US, told Science Magazine that the research featured in PNAS had been looking in the wrong places.

BBC: Mammoth-killing space blast 'off the hook'

Recently, however, Carlos Bustamante, a biophysicist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, and his colleagues there and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have found a way to observe proteins as they search for their binding sites.

ECONOMIST: How (and why) to find a needle in a haystack | The

The one place in the country where track remains a major sport is Eugene, home of the University of Oregon.

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