Text excerpted, by permission, from The Nature of Nebraska: Ecology and Biodiversity, by Paul A. Johnsgard ’55.
There is a Place…
If you plan for one year, plant rice. If you plan for 10 years, plant trees. If you plan for 100 years, educate mankind. —Kuan-Tzu
There is a place in America where East and West merge together as smoothly as one river flows into another. That place is called the Great Plains. There is a river in America that gave sustenance to perhaps a hundred thousand migrants who trudged westward in the mid-nineteenth century along the Mormon and Oregon Trails. That river is called … » More …
Audubon himself would have trouble keeping up with this dynamo. Artist,
author, and photographer Paul Johnsgard '55 gives us a glimpse into his
lifelong obsession with birds. » More ...
In the fast paced world of immunological research, it’s not your p’s and q’s you have to mind, but your b’s and t’s. That’s B cells and T cells, two of the main players in the complex orchestra that makes up your immune system. B. Paige Lawrence, assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy, keeps track of both in her research into how the environmental contaminant dioxin affects immune system function but spends most of her time with T cells.
Dioxins are the byproducts of many industrial processes, including the incineration of municipal and medical wastes and of plastics. While they are destroyed by heat, … » More …
Eugenics was the dark side of our understanding of human evolution.
American eugenicists were united by the idea that the human race was
degenerating because inferior people were breeding more quickly than
those who were "well born." Zoology 61, Genetics and Eugenics, was
finally dropped from the course catalog at Washington State College in
1950.
All of modern biology and medicine is based on the theory of evolution,
and every life scientist arguably is an evolutionary biologist. So
where to start in exploring evolutionary biology at WSU? How about with
dung beetles, African violets, and promiscuous wrens?
With a new baby as inspiration, and an interdisciplinary team to help,
husband and wife Amit Bandyopadhyay and Susmita Bose have set out to
solve the puzzle of how to imitate nature's growth of the human bone. » More ...
Art can be considered as a behavior . . . like play, like food sharing, like howling, that is, something humans do because it helps them to survive, and to survive better than they would without it.”
—from Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why,Ellen Dissanayake ’57
I open my hand and the little wren, momentarily startled by its newfound freedom, flutters quickly to the nearest bush. I stand in the hot tropical Australian sun and watch as the tiny bird flits from branch to branch, a black- and red-feathered jewel. I have just captured this little bird, collected a page … » More …
Nearly 6,000 people came to Beasley Coliseum the evening of March 8 to hear Jane Goodall speak about chimpanzees, conservation, and her own growth from shy child to scientific celebrity. In the early 1960s, she became the first person to observe chimps using sticks to dig up termites to eat. That finding demolished the notion that tool use is a distinctively human activity and led to other studies showing that chimps have high mental abilities and a rich emotional life that includes joy, anger, grief, and embarrassment. What remains uniquely human is our complex speech and the ability to share ideas, said Goodall; no one … » More …
