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Summer 2024

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Fall 2008

Electricity from a beet

Chemists around the world are looking to the plant kingdom for ideas about harvesting the energy of sunlight. Plants, after all, have been making a living exploiting sunbeams for almost four billion years. And part of what plants accomplish each day creates a tiny flow of electrons—a form of electricity.

The familiar solar-electric panels on the roofs of RVs depend on pure silicon crystals, which are produced in an energy-intensive manufacturing process. The crystals are semiconductors “doped” with special impurities to make them work—impurities that are often toxic metals requiring special mining to unearth. These first-generation panels certainly work, but the electrical power we can … » More …

Fall 2008

60 minutes with Don Hewitt

This spring, while a reporter from a Spokane TV station sat face to face with 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt, two Washington State University communications students waited quietly in the hall for their turn with the television legend.

Jamie Grosz, a senior who would soon be interviewing the CBS news veteran, used the time to run over her questions and switch into a pair of high heels for the on-camera interview. The cameraman, Brent Weisberg, started unpacking his equipment.

They weren’t missing much by waiting outside since the Spokane station interview covered many of same questions Hewitt had been answering over the past few … » More …

Fall 2008

The New Virtualism: Beijing, the 2008 Olympic Games, and a new style for world architecture

Something significant is happening in Beijing. It has to do with proclaiming a new style of world architecture at the dawn of the twenty-first century. I call it “The New Virtualism,” and because there are now enough of these buildings in existence, for the first time I can describe the “looks” of this new style.

It is not that New Virtualist architecture is found only in Beijing. As a matter of fact, unlike past architectural styles, which were always regional movements before spreading their influence further afield, New Virtualism is the first architectural style in the history of the world that is immediately global in … » More …

Fall 2008

To Err is Human

The older a woman is when she conceives, the more likely it is her eggs will have abnormal chromosomes. But beyond the fact of the biological clock, we often overlook a bigger story. Even with young mothers, chromosome abnormalities are the single most frequent cause of miscarriage and birth defects. Between 25 and 30 percent of all fertilized human eggs have the wrong number of chromosomes, a rate that seems peculiar to humans. » More ...
Spring 2006

When Pullman was a ski town

“Everybody still skis tremendously,” says Richter.”They’re all in really good shape.”

In 1952 the Washington State College ski team placed first in the Northern Division, the Pacific Coast Conference, and the North American International Intercollegiate Tournament in Banff, Alberta. In 1953 the Cougars won every University and College meet they entered, including Banff and the National Intercollegiate Championship at snow Basin, Utah. The following year the National Intercollegiate Championship became the NCAA Division I championship, which took place in Reno, Nevada. The Cougars were favored to win that as well. But the coach of the University of Denver team  managed to get two of the … » More …

Spring 2006

Eat more garlic

If there’s just one thing you plant in your garden, make it garlic.

For one thing, it’s extraordinarily easy to grow. Plant it around Columbus Day. Cover it with mulch. Or don’t. Water it now and then when it starts growing again in the spring. And that’s about it.

You can start eating it at any stage, though obviously you don’t want to eat it all up before it develops heads. Thus, you need to plant a lot. You can chop the young shoots and add to a stir-fry. Pull the developing young heads and slice, using it for a mild flavoring. In early summer, … » More …

Spring 2006

Words on words

 

Mark Twain is rumored to have said that he had no respect for a man who could spell a word in just one way. Many college students wish that their English professors shared this view. Yes, it’s true that conventional spelling promotes effective communication—no one denies it—but at the same time there’s always a loss when capitulation to conformity extends too far. A good example is vocabulary usage, particularly in academic settings. Am I the only person in the University who’s heard the words “benchmarking” and “networking” a few times too often? Somehow I doubt it. In my own field of study, English literature, … » More …

Spring 2006

See Shells Far From the Sea Shore

If the winter grays have you hankering for a glimpse of beach life, head to the Washington State University Tri-Cities campus at Richland. There, more than 200 miles from Washington’s coast—or just a few clicks down the Internet road—you’ll find the Gladys Archerd Shell Collection. Looking at the incredible variety of whorls, spikes, and splashes of color, you can almost hear the gulls calling and feel the sand between your toes.

The collection was the lifelong passion of Gladys Doy Archerd, whose fascination with shells began in the early 1900s with childhood walks along the shores of the Olympic Peninsula. Over the years she became … » More …

Spring 2006

Doggy Dream House

Basil was a dog in need of a home. And with just 30 hours to assess the whippet’s personality and create and execute a design, a group of Washington State University design students were determined to give him one.

It was an intense competition with “a tremendously difficult timeline,” says Keith Diaz Moore, assistant professor of architecture and landscape architecture, who coordinated the annual design-challenge charrette for the Interdisciplinary Design Institute. “To complete everything in 30 hours is pretty amazing—and to see the delicacy of some of these solutions is fascinating.”

More than 100 students from a variety of disciplines—architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and … » More …