“While it is devastating to see the impact of the Chornobyl accident—both economically and socially—international nuclear safety has advanced significantly because of this incident.”—Susan Senner
Teams of communications professionals at the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington, juggled shifts to respond to hoards of news media calls in April 1986 about a catastrophic accident at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Susan McKenna Senner worked with this group, responding to questions about Hanford’s N-Reactor, which had some design similarities to the ill-fated Chornobyl plant. The Hanford crew manned phones and provided reassurance that multiple safety systems in place at N-Reactor would prevent such an accident … » More …
“The goal you set for yourself is to stay the course . . . to stay focused. At any time you get tired of the glare off the snow, the dust, the miles of glacial terrain, the travel, the lack of sleep, the altitude. The altitude just takes a huge toll on you.”—John Roskelley
After four failed attempts, the last one 10 years ago, John Roskelley must have wondered if he’d ever get another chance to conquer 29,035-foot Mount Everest. Or even if he wanted to.
Never underestimate Roskelley’s resolve.
The Spokane County commissioner has been climbing since 1965. For years he was among the … » More …
Living in a subdivision where the power lines are strung on poles in our back alleys, we have had more than our usual share of power outages this summer. This has been blamed on the rapid expansion of the neighborhood squirrel population because of the loud pop of the short-circuit that preceded every incident. On August 14, my wife wondered aloud how big the squirrel must have been to have popped everything from Detroit to New York City.
The blame game for the massive outage is just starting. We’ll hear about the operators who didn’t open circuit breakers in time, the engineers who didn’t design … » More …
On a typical day, a dozen pharmacists, physicians, and other health care practitioners will call the Drug Information Center (DIC) in Spokane for some help.
“The questions run from easy ones we can answer right away to ones where three days from now we still don’t have an answer,” says Danial E. Baker, DIC director and a pharmacy professor at WSU Spokane.
The center, which was started in 1973 and is primarily funded by grants and contracts, also serves as a teaching laboratory for up to four pharmacy students at a time. Students in their final year of pharmacy school spend six weeks … » More …
Almost 500,000 people in the U.S. die each year from coronary artery disease, the most common type of heart disease. Half of those people didn’t even know they were at risk or had any symptoms of the condition, according to the American Heart Association.
This could change, however, with the adoption of more accurate ways to identify who has the disease, instead of relying on less consistent risk factors like cholesterol levels.
During the past 10 years, more than 1,000 Washington State residents have participated in the Spokane Heart Study, which might do just that—change the way coronary artery disease is identified. Every two years, … » More …