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The Battle Against Ignorance : An Interview with Bob Edwards
Niva, Cox named WSU regents
Connie Millard Niva and Angela S. Cox were named by Governor Gary Locke this summer to Washington State University’s 10-member Board of Regents. Cox will serve as the student member, a position created in 1998.
Niva (’62 Bact. & Public Health) makes her home in Everett. She served on the Everett City Council, 1986-89, and on the Washington State Transportation Commission for 10 years, including three as chair.
As a regent, she says, she’d like to see WSU continue making progress in creating the best undergraduate experience and in nurturing a world class environment for research, scholarship, and graduate education. She also wants WSU to … » More …
Working to prevent another Chornobyl
“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 …
A bug-eat-bug world
If you can put other insects to work eating the insects that are bothering you, everybody wins. Except the pests.
» More ...Software system enables precise radiation treatment for tumors
Seldom do software engineers get to see their work save lives. But new software developed by Washington State University alumnus Thanos Etmektzoglou is making a difference for cancer patients.
For the past 13 years Etmektzoglou has worked at Varian Medical Systems in Palo Alto, California, to develop a software control system that allows for more precise delivery of radiation to cancerous tumors.
Radiation is used in cancer treatment, because it more negatively affects cancerous cells than healthy ones. Doctors work to provide sufficient radiation to kill the cancer cells, while keeping injury to the surrounding healthy cells and organs at a minimum. With some cancers, … » More …
The first casualty
Vietnam was the last conflict in which reporters could speak and write with prudent freedom.
During one of the nation’s many wars, I wrote of a patrol that came under fire and killed an enemy soldier. Before continuing, the GIs cut off the dead man’s genitals, and forced them into his mouth, leaving also a playing card-Ace of Spades-on his body. The soldiers said that such were enemy superstitions, that they would not cross over a dead man so festooned, thus it was required to keep the other side effectively tethered if the patrol was to complete its mission.
It was a poor excuse for … » More …
A tale of many cities
As a boy Clint Borgen dreamed of having an interesting life, radically different from the humdrum sleepiness of Anacortes, Washington, his commercial-fishing-oriented hometown. He played spy games with a seemingly fearless older brother and best friend. At 20, Borgen became a firefighter. No small wonder that the next year (1999) he hopped a flight to Macedonia for a month of volunteer service, simply because he had watched television images of Albanian refugees and wanted to see the war zone for himself.
Returning safely to another somnolent community, this time Pullman, Borgen (’03 Comm.) published a book late last year about his four-year, 13-country marathon of … » More …
An American in Albania
Adapted from a series of e-mail messages from the author to friends and associates.
Introduction
Since serving three terms as ASWSU president as an undergraduate, I have never lost my passion for the process of student representation. I’ve tried to be a help to as many student leaders as possible, and I have wound up speaking at a lot of conferences around the nation, and even helped found the American Student Government Association (the only professional association for student governments) in 2003.
Earlier this year, I was asked by the State Department to do a speaking/training tour in Albania … » More …
When trash reveals history
From October 2005 through March 2006, I worked with ephemera in one of the great libraries of the world, the Bodleian at the University of Oxford. A cheeky person might say that “ephemera” is just a fancy term for trash. However, given the passage of time, even trash can become terribly interesting.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines ephemera as something that has a transitory existence. Printed ephemera may be items, such as broadsides, chapbooks, bus tickets, menus, playbills, and lists, to name just a few categories, that were not intended survive their immediate use. As most printed ephemera were not saved, what does remain can … » More …