Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Summer 2024

Article

Fall 2009

Poised for playing

Anyone who has taken music lessons has probably absorbed enough instructions about posture to feel like a raw recruit at basic training: Stand straight! Head up! Toes forward!

Leah Jordan, who is starting her senior year at Washington State University, says not to worry about forcing yourself into the “proper” position for playing an instrument. In fact, she says you’ll probably play better if you don’t—and she has the hard scientific evidence to prove it.

Jordan converted her personal experience as a trumpet player into an honors program research project that showed that most players play better if they stand the way their bodies … » More …

Fall 2009

Foiling an invasive

Sometimes, figuring something out only deepens the overall mystery.

Take Pseudomonas fluorescens D7, for example.

Ann Kennedy, a USDA-Agricultural Research Service soil microbiologist at Washington State University, has isolated these native bacteria as a perfectly natural way to fight cheatgrass, also known as downy brome, scientific name Bromus tectorum. Recently, she and her colleagues were awarded a large grant to test the effectiveness of Pseudomonas fluorescens D7 for controlling cheatgrass in rangeland.

Cheatgrass, which was introduced in the late 19th century as a forage crop, is an aggressive invader, a grass that has, according to WSU botanist » More …

Fall 2009

Safer skies

When Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano rumbled to life this past spring, images of the plume of ash rising from it probably revived terrifying memories among 240 people who survived its last eruption in 1989.

They’d been passengers on KLM flight 867, a Boeing 747 bound for Anchorage. Ten hours after the volcano erupted, the plane flew through an ordinary-looking cloud. Except it wasn’t a cloud. It was ash from the Redoubt eruption.

The plane lost all communications, radar, electronic cockpit displays—and, within the span of one minute, all four engines. It plunged almost 15,000 feet before the crew managed to restart three of the … » More …

Fall 2009

Virtually WSU

Swoop around Bryan Hall clock tower like Superman. Examine tiny details of the Sistine Chapel murals. Enter Tut’s tomb. Float in a cell next to the mitochondria. All within 15 minutes.

What sounds like a fever dream becomes a reality within the virtual three-dimensional world Second Life, a world now joined by a replica of part of WSU’s Pullman campus.

WSU joins hundreds of universities and colleges with a presence in Second Life. Many of these institutions have classes, conferences, experiments, art galleries, and innovative 3-D displays. The virtual WSU will host distance degree classes beginning this fall.

Second … » More …

Fall 2009

Curbing aggressive driving

There’s something about youth and speed and cars.

Criminal justice doctoral student Yu-Sheng Lin tapped into it in his study of risky and aggressive driving behaviors. Surveying Washington State University students, who averaged the age of 19, he joined up with marketing graduate student Mark Mulder and associate professor Jeffrey Joireman to look at the effects of impulsivity and thrill-seeking on dangerous driving. They also examined whether the drivers considered future consequences when making their choices on the road.

Aggressive driving is likely the last crime to be featured on a television drama, Lin admits. “But I wanted to focus on something that can apply … » More …

Fall 2009

Master Gardeners

"Cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973" is how the Master Gardeners explain themselves. The concept has worked well. Washington, where it all started, now has over 3,000 volunteer Master Gardeners, who in exchange for training in turn give their knowledge and expertise to others in their communities. These communities have now spread across the United States and Canada. » More ...
Fall 2007

Marilyn Conaway: Charting new waters

Ten years ago, as Marilyn Eylar Conaway (’56 Hist.) rowed an inflatable boat on an Alaskan lake, she pictured herself as a girl working the oars of her father’s handmade boat.

The thought recalled the simple joys of an idyllic childhood in Grand Coulee, where her father had helped build the dam. But both of Conaway’s parents and three of her six siblings had since died, her husband Gerry’s heart was faltering, she herself had heart disease, and she was about to end a storied career in education.

That day, memory became mission: Conaway didn’t want to rock a chair; she wanted to row a … » More …

Fall 2007

Jim Torina: Playing well with others

Nothing short of the opportunity to make the world a better place while making a lot of money could have lured Jim Torina ’84 out of his retirement. He’d already made a fortune building high-end homes around the Puget Sound and was happily surfing in Mexico.

Torina wasn’t about to give up his hard-earned surfing for just any tantalizing deal.

But this was different.

First, here was this clear need: According to a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people a year. The medical costs of treating drug-related injuries occurring at hospitals alone amount … » More …