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Summer 2014

Machine in the classroom

New tech tools engage young scientists

In a familiar classroom scene, lab partners take turns squinting into a microscope. They spy a wriggling paramecium, if the organism doesn’t swim away from the field of view. These days they also peer into an iPad to watch videos and access digital textbooks. Engineer and entrepreneur Jeff Stewart sees a happy marriage between these old and new technologies in science classrooms.

Stewart and his colleagues at Exo Labs have enhanced that connection with an accessory that connects any microscope to an iPad, where students and teachers can take pictures and videos, measure objects, and quickly share … » More …

Summer 2014

State of wonder

A childhood spent in Washington has never been better. » More ...

Summer 2014

Summer spikes

The Washington State University volleyball offices just off Bohler Gym are a lively place, even on an off-season Tuesday in mid-winter. The far office is buzzing with the voices of coaches planning the afternoon practice, the phone rings and rings again, and an athlete studying on a couch greets another sweeping through between classes and the weight room.

The team’s last public game was in November, but recruitment is in full swing, there is some light training, and coaches and staff are planning for a series of summer camps for nearly 300 grade school, middle school, and high school girls. Several other WSU sports programs, … » More …

Summer 2014

The scoop on Ferdinand’s murals

Visible clouds of breath hang about as we all look upon what remains of the original murals of the Ferdinand’s ice cream shop once located in the now deserted Troy Hall.

The first home of the dairy department, Troy is in the middle of campus and in poor condition. Roped off for safety, this 1920s brick structure has been on the University’s capital planning list for renovation for a few years now. It is currently in the design stage of what is expected to be a $40 million renovation so that it can be a suitable home for environmental sciences and chemistry.

As rotting … » More …

Summer 2014

A matter of taste

The human tongue is a pink, undulating, fleshy affair covered in thousands of papillae—all the better for sensory perception. If the tongue weren’t so ordinary, it would be strange to think of such an appendage taking up most of the room in your closed mouth, allowing you to discriminate the foul from the toothsome.

But there it is.

And here I am in Room 150 of the Food Science and Human Nutrition Building on the Pullman campus, one of eight panelists who will smell and drink wine after wine after wine over the course of two weeks. Kenny McMahon, a doctoral student, is our overseer, … » More …

Summer 2014

Sex, drugs, and differences

After decades of researching gender differences in the effects of drugs, Rebecca Craft has found that females using marijuana are likelier than men to become dependent on the drug and suffer more severe withdrawals.

At the same time, females seem to be more sensitive to the drug’s pain-relieving qualities.

Craft, a Washington State University psychology professor who studies the effects of psychoactive drugs on rats, has reported these findings most recently in journals such as Life Sciences and Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Her work, funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, focuses on the medical side of cannabinoids, the class of drugs … » More …

Spring 2014

Two alumni recognized for their contributions to food and agriculture

In recent months, the Washington State University Alumni Association honored United Nations Food Safety Officer Masami Takeuchi and Louisiana State University Professor Gail L. Cramer with WSU Alumni Achievement Awards.

A native of Japan, Masami Takeuchi earned her first bachelor’s degree in 1994 from Kwassui University in Nagasaki, Japan. At WSU, she completed a bachelor’s degree in 1999, a master of science degree in 2001, and a doctorate in 2004, all in human nutrition.

Based in Rome, Takeuchi is one of a small group of food safety and quality officers working for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Nutrition and Consumer Protection Division.

From … » More …

Spring 2014

Nancy Gillett ’78—The business of science

When pathologist and researcher Nancy Gillett ’78 decided to leave Genentech, a major medical biotechnology firm, for a small contract research company, her colleagues called it professional suicide. But Gillett had made life-altering career decisions before, moving from being a practicing veterinarian to a research scientist and then to a top-level business executive overseeing 5,000 people at 13 sites around the world.

Gillett’s significant success as a researcher and executive has led to accolades, including the 2013 Regents’ Distinguished Alumna Award from Washington State University. Her path to the University’s highest honor started as the young student from Las Vegas, Nevada, came to WSU to … » More …

Spring 2014

A true story fraught with peril

As disaster-obsessed scientists go, geologists must be near the top of the list. They deal with time scales spanning billions of years, so a set of catastrophes occurring 10 million years ago is like yesterday. Something in the last century comes close to being, well, now.

And they see catastrophe all over the place.

Take the roadcut near the Old Moscow Road. It’s a modest pile of crumbling rock, but John Wolff and Rick Conrey can see in its surrounding rock a thick blanket of hot lava inundating southeast Washington.

“It covers an area that goes from here to Spokane to The Dalles, buried at … » More …

Spring 2014

Posts for Spring 2014

Saddened to learn

I was most saddened to learn of President Glenn Terrell’s death while reading the most recent edition of Washington State Magazine.

During the years I was a graduate student and Head Resident of Stevens Hall, President Terrell often would walk by our dorm as he went from his residence to his office. Whenever he saw me, he would smile, make eye contact, greet me by name, and often inquire about my studies. How he knew my name, I will never know. What I do know, firsthand, is the warm feeling of belonging that I felt on those many occasions … » More …