WSM Winter 2008

Winter 2008

Meaningful glimpses

Little of what goes on at a university is the stuff of breaking news. The general formula for what gets reported about a university is pretty much the same as for politics and world affairs: money gained and lost, a result here, a conclusion there, a gaffe, a little scandal now and then. But the really interesting stuff, the stuff that matters, seldom gets much attention.

Yet on any given day here on campus, a reknowned herpetologist might, as Ken Kardong did earlier this fall, summarize his life’s work to a good-sized and feisty crowd of faculty and students. He demonstrated how over evolutionary time, … » More …

Winter 2008

Everybody reads

When Mary Roach was researching her book on human cadavers, she attended a seminar where plastic surgeons practiced techniques on severed human heads. She also visited a body farm in Tennessee to see remains in various states of decay. And she stood at an operating table to witness an organ harvest from a brain-dead patient whose heart was still beating.

While doing all these things, Roach simply followed her curiosity as it led her into some extraordinary places.

Jay Barton, a pre-med student, is one of 3,400 freshmen invited to participate in … » More …

Winter 2008

Special delivery

Cliff Berkman is taking aim at prostate cancer.

The Washington State University chemist is using part of the cancer cells themselves as a bull’s eye, targeting a protein that occurs on prostate cancer cells and nowhere else.

The protein, called PSMA (Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen), shows up as soon as prostate cells become cancerous. PSMA is different from PSA, the prostate protein that is currently used to diagnose prostate cancer. PSA is released by prostate cancer cells into the bloodstream. PSMA stays attached to the cancer cells, like a neon sign saying “CANCER HERE!”

Since PSMA is so specific to prostate cancer cells, Berkman thought … » More …

Winter 2008

Measuring a career in elephant years

Rose-Tu warily eyes the stranger shuffling toward her. He is moving slowly and grasping the arm of a human she sees almost daily. As Matthew Maberry (D.V.M. ’47) plants his cane inside the Oregon Zoo’s elephant compound, he lifts his eyes and returns the look.

“The only trouble with elephants,” says Maberry, the Portland zoo’s first staff veterinarian, “is you can fall in love with them.”

Maberry—”Doc” to some—is eager to get started. Now up close to Rose-Tu, the 90-year-old presses an instrument against the elephant’s wrinkled belly. Inside, the first Asian elephant baby to be born at the zoo since 1994 is finishing … » More …

Winter 2008

Ferdinand’s turns 60

This brief item appeared on the front page of the Daily Evergreen on Monday, October 11, 1948:

Dairy Dept. to Open Counter in Troy Hall

The department of dairy husbandry will start operating a dairy counter serving ice cream, plain and chocolate milk on the first floor of Troy hall near the north entrance.

Assistant professor L. J. Manus will be in charge, assisted by dairy manufacturing students. All products served will be made in the department, and prices will be comparable to those charged downtown.

Later on, when obsolete equipment has been replaced, milkshakes, cheese and … » More …

Winter 2008

Who moved my cupola?

During a quiet weekend last July, a crew came to campus to steal away one of the University’s oldest landmarks–the Ferry Hall cupola. The quaint 12-foot by 12-foot Georgian-style structure had already survived more than a century and a major relocation. Now it was on the move again.

A lot of Washington State University’s history is tied up with the architectural element, starting with the original Ferry Hall, the University’s first dormitory, occupying the south end campus. Men and women lived on separate floors there until Stevens Hall, the residence dedicated for women, went up on the opposite end of campus.

While he liked the … » More …

Winter 2008

A reburial eases a clash of culture and science

On a bluff above the Snake River, a few miles upstream from the Tri-Cities, people are gathering on a July morning to bury their dead. Or rebury, actually. The bones that fill the ordinary cardboard boxes sitting next to a deep open grave have spent decades in a laboratory storeroom. On one box is printed in neat letters, “woman and child.”

A warm breeze rustles the sage and wild rye, as people approach the grave in small groups, people of the Yakama, Colville, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Wannapum. Although the identities of the remains are uncertain, they are certainly ancestors of many of those gathered … » More …

Winter 2008

Gateway to Rodinia

A cantaloupe-sized chunk of granite from the other side of the world has revealed that nearly a billion years ago, the Palouse was “ground zero” when a supercontinent called Rodinia broke up.

“This was the edge of the continent,” says Washington State University geologist Jeff Vervoort, looking out over the rolling hills from his office on the 10th floor of Webster Hall.

Vervoort coaxed the story from the small boulder, which was found by his colleague John Goodge of the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Vervoort and Goodge had studied many other ancient rocks, and to them the chunk looked like a “one-point-four,” part of a distinctive … » More …

Winter 2008

L’Américain en Provence

A story about an expatriate—and about his wine. Provence is a world away from Bellevue, where Denis Gayte '97 grew up. And French winemaking is another world away from the public relations career he abandoned. So there he was, with his French heritage and a newly minted "young French winemaker" degree—but still referred to (and always affectionately) as l'Américain. » More ...