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Spring 2013

Fruitful history

Apple production was initially spread more evenly across eastern Washington. The planned agricultural community of Vineland (see “The perfect city,” WSM Fall 2012) included more than 900 acres of continuous apple orchards. According to Lyman’s History of Old Walla Walla County (including Asotin County), Vineland and adjacent Clarkston had “every conceivable advantage of soil, climate, scenery, water supply…”

Apples grown there included Winesap, Yellow Newtowns, Spitzenberg, Jonathan, Rome Beauty, and “assorted varieties.”

The September 12, 1916, edition of the Spokesman-Review reported that 60 carloads of choice apples were about to be packed in Vineland, Clarkston, and Lewiston, Idaho, for export trade: “The first carload … » More …

Spring 2013

Steadfast Cougar Spirit

Golden and Diamond Graduates Reunion

A lot has changed in 60 years. Six decades ago, Washington State University was still called the State College of Washington. Todd Hall, Holland Library, and the Compton Union Building were newly built. Legendary coach Jack Friel helmed the men’s basketball team, and the college belonged to the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference.

Today, campus landmarks include a new Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health and a freshly remodeled Martin Stadium. One thing remains unchanged: the Cougar homing instinct. No matter when they graduated, Cougars love returning “home” to Pullman. This April, hundreds of WSU graduates from 1953 and … » More …

Spring 2013

George R. “Bob” Pettit ’52—A profile in persistence

Every few days, Bob Pettit ’52 runs six miles. Now 83, he has done this since his late 20s, when he joined the faculty of the University of Maine and felt the mounting tensions of academic life.

“It’s a great release of stress,” he said this fall while visiting Pullman to receive the Regents’ Distinguished Alumnus Award, the highest honor for WSU alumni. “And I think aerobic exercise is the secret formula for longevity.”

Pettit’s running habit also speaks to his fortitude, whether he’s diving in waters around the world in a search for natural cures to cancer, finding new ways to process tons of … » More …

Spring 2013

Taste, an Accounting in Three Scenes

Questions of taste—let’s put it simply—can tire. Like a second colonoscopy. Like a second fall of man. Do we have to go through that again?

In the beginning, one is innocent of taste. Then, introduced to the concept, our new Adam and Eve realize their paradisal minds contain no data concerning the charms of early polyphony, track lighting, or cocktail recipes using angostura bitters. Cover up!

Now some years back, the Spanish metaphysician José Ortega y Gasset had the audacity (bad taste?) to question René Descartes. “I think, therefore I am,”Ortega y Gasset said, was based on a false premise. For some reason it didn’t … » More …

Spring 2013

How Washington tastes: The Apple meets Cougar Gold

Much of Carolyn Ross’s work involves training people to quantify their taste. The sensory evaluation panels that she and her graduate students organize assess taste attributes in fruit and other foods and beverages such as sweetness, acidity, bitterness, and astringency. And “mouth feel,” which contributes enormously to the taste experience.

But for these panels to arrive at a consensus of, say, how sweet a given apple is, or how tart, or how much it crunches in relation to other apples, everyone must agree on the intensity of those attributes.

Before the panel members can evaluate a given food, they will train for a number of … » More …

Spring 2013

Spinach is suspect: A pathological mystery

The case started a few years ago when a farmer approached seed pathologist Lindsey du Toit at WSU Mount Vernon wondering what was damaging his spinach seed crop out in the field. He had planted on clean ground that hadn’t had spinach before. He wondered if maybe the stock seed had a problem.

“It didn’t make sense,” says du Toit, explaining that what happened to the plants didn’t fit with the known diseases. At the time, du Toit and one of her graduate students were looking at fungal pathogens in the seeds of spinach plants. About 75 percent of the spinach seed grown in … » More …

Spring 2013

Replays for all

The idea of having control of his view of a sporting event struck Sankar “Jay” Jayaram in 2009 while he was watching a Seahawks game on TV and wishing he was in the stands.

“I had never been to a Seahawks game and I wished I could put on a 3D headset and be in the stadium,” says the Washington State University mechanical engineering and computer science professor.

Fortunately Jayaram, an expert in virtual reality modeling, had been working for several years on an immersive 3D experience for use on exercise machines. His startup firm 3D-4U Solutions holds patents on the technology which creates 180- or … » More …

Spring 2013

Down Under to Pullman

The crowd at Beasley Coliseum calls out, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oy, Oy, Oy!” for the Australian basketball players on the court, but one key to the Down Under connection sits on the sidelines.

Assistant WSU coach Ben Johnson played professionally and coached in Australia for six years, and has been instrumental in bringing standout players Aron Baynes and Brock Motum from there, as well as up-and-coming players Dexter Kernich-Drew and James Hunter.

Johnson, who has been at Washington State for nine seasons, says, “Through that time, I was able to build some good networks and contacts over there in Australia. And … » More …

Spring 2013

Tiny cracks, big effect

Of all the troubling images evoked by the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site, the plume of uranium-tainted groundwater seeping into the Columbia River comes near the top of the list. Millions of gallons of radioactive waste were processed at the site and, starting in the ’40s, government scientists detected it in the area’s groundwater.

One site, called the 300 Area, has a plume of several million gallons affecting a 3,000-foot stretch of the Columbia River shoreline. Monitoring wells and riverbank springs have had uranium levels in excess of drinking-water standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The river provides drinking water … » More …

Spring 2013

Sick stocks

It’s cold and flu season. And no one is immune, not even Wall Street.

That’s the notion Brian McTier, a WSU Vancouver-based business school faculty member, and his colleagues explored when examining the impact of influenza on the U.S. stock market. McTier has been examining external events that might affect the stock market that weren’t normally modeled. Those effects include class action suits in securities, electronic funds transfer errors driven by sentiment, and the flu.

For the study, which is being published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the authors started with the hypothesis that high rates of influenza could affect trading as … » More …