CAS Connection - Feb 2026 Issue

Humans are used to seeing red in blood — but red blood isn't universal in the animal kingdom. For some creatures, this vital fluid is purple; in others it’s yellow, green or even white. Smithsonian Magazine spoke with John Postlethwait, a developmental geneticist in the Department of Biology about Antarctic blackfin icefish of the family Channichthyida, the only known vertebrates that don’t make hemoglobin and do not have red blood cells. Their blood is a milky, translucent white. “They really are kind of ghostly," he said.

Nearly two weeks after the Oct. 15 shooting at a Bend-La Pine school, the shooter's absentee status from school raises questions about who should step in when kids don’t go to school and whether there are enough tools to pull them back to class. “There’s pretty strong evidence that rather than serving a deterring effect for these kids, justice system involvement is actually a promoter of delinquency,” CAS sociologist Stephanie Wiley told Bend Source Weekly.

Eugene’s long-running mobile crisis service, CAHOOTS, shut down in the city more than a year-and-a-half ago. KLCC spoke with Rori Rohlfs, CAS data scientist and co-author of recent research about CAHOOTS. The nature of calls for welfare response changed and law enforcement responses changed, Rohlfs said. “After CAHOOTS stopped service, the arrest rate for those calls has doubled,” Rohlfs said.