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Winter 2005

Maybe tomorrow: Graduate student follows his heart into uncharted territory

Just as Washington State University political science student Steve Overfelt was finishing his master’s degree coursework and preparing to write his thesis, he decided to put it off. And his advisor, Prof. Martha Cottam, encouraged him to do so.

Was this evidence of deteriorating academic standards at WSU? Hardly. It was a response to the tsunami that devastated coastal communities in Southeast Asia on December 26, 2004.

“I’d spent Thanksgiving in Indonesia doing research for my thesis on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), so I really wanted to go back to help,” Overfelt says. “But nobody wanted my physical labor, only the cash in my pocket. After … » More …

Winter 2005

Rewriting the Book on Photosynthesis

Thanks to David Kramer and his research group, plant physiologists can now explore what really goes on inside living leaves. » More ...

Winter 2005

Hanging on by a whisker

What geology hath put asunder, biologists are are trying to join back together. So far it's working, although the effort requires a different measure of success than what's usually appled. » More ...

Winter 2005

It’s Only a Model

Modelers don't always expect their models to be "right." But they do expect them to help explain our world. » More ...

Winter 2005

Not Your Normal Truffle

Head Cowgirl Marilyn Lysohir followed her muse West in search of Art and Chocolate. » More ...

Spring 2004

Mount St. Helens: The perfect laboratory

It is impossible to accept the immensity of Mount St. Helens and the effect of its catastrophic 1980 eruption unless you are able to stand beneath the enormous crater on the pumice plain and listen to John Bishop talk about lupines. » More ...

Winter 2005

Living with Art

What happens when enjoyment becomes passion.

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Fall 2005

Home run at the bottom of the world

When I was completing my last semester at WSU 10 years ago, I never imagined I would end up in Antarctica, providing computer network support for the U.S. Antarctic Program. I work on the RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP), an icebreaker that is contracted by the National Science Foundation for scientific research in Antarctica. The ship spends several months a year in the waters and sea ice surrounding the world’s coldest, driest, and most remote continent.

I am currently working on a science cruise called SHALDRIL-Shallow Drilling Along the Antarctic Continental Margin. Core drilling from a single, unassisted icebreaker has never been done before in … » More …

Fall 2005

Operation Chow Hound

In 1945, the German occupation had Holland on its knees. The Dutch were starving, because the Germans were not supplying them with food. Adelderd Davids of Nijmegen, Holland, six years old at the time, lived in Rotterdam. “It was awful,” he recalls. “We ate tulip bulbs. Some people ate rats, because there was absolutely nothing. We had two or three potatoes for 10 people. Our mother would ask after dinner, ‘Who is still hungry? You can eat the peelings.’ On a feast day they made a torte out of the bulbs.”

England’s Royal Air Force and the United States 8th Air Force joined together to … » More …

Fall 2005

Cracking the Code

Nevins talks quickly and waves his hands when describing his own special tools, the challenges of making rings out of fragile marble … “I get daily requests for plans,” he says.

Justin Nevins loved all the riddles in The DaVinci Code, the secret of the Holy Grail, the messages the Renaissance master had hidden in his paintings. But what really grabbed him was the marble cylinder box in which secret messages were locked. From the moment he heard it described on a book on tape, he wondered how it would work.

But that was a year and a half ago, and Nevins had other things … » More …