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Winter 2016

Your skin crawls

Skin.

Our interface with the world. When something goes wrong with skin, people notice. Scars, acne, a change in pigment. Wounds that refuse to heal and chronic conditions like psoriasis. When skin doesn’t behave properly, it hurts.

For over 25 years, molecular biologist Jonathan Jones has been looking for ways to help speed the epidermal healing process. As a child in Wales, he’d suffered from itchy red patches of eczema, an annoying condition that eventually got him thinking about skin in a scientific way. Recently, that interest paid off with the surprising discovery that skin cells “walk” during wound healing. The finding could provide new … » More …

Winter 2016

Wood Takes Wing

The most complex chemistry lab on the planet is growing in your neighborhood. There might be a tree in your own backyard, cranking out chemicals as it converts sunlight to food, wards off pests, and circulates water and nutrients through it roots, branches, and leaves.

So diverse is the chemical compendium produced by trees that we get aspirin (willow bark is a natural source of salicylic acid and has been used to treat pain since ancient times), the ink Leonardo used in his notebooks (from leaf galls produced by wasp larvae), and natural antibacterials (the fiber in cedar chips is used to make hospital gowns).

… » More …

Winter 2016

Breaking through

Paul Henning ’98 didn’t set out to be a professional musician. “I swore up and down I wasn’t going to be a music major or study music—but then, look what I did!” he says.

He moved to Los Angeles where he made a lot of phone calls looking for work as a session player, orchestrator, or proofreader of musical scores—and ended up working with John Williams on the music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Over the course of 60 years, John Williams has scored over 100 films and taken home five Oscars. All his scores, Henning says, start with Williams at the piano … » More …

Devon Meister. Photo Drew Tarter/Tarter Photographic Services

Winter 2016

Storming the clouds

Flying into a hurricane might be the stuff of nightmares for the average person, but for Devon Meister ’14 MBA, it’s just another day on the job.

A meteorologist and pilot in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, Meister routinely flies a WC-130J into the heart of some of nature’s biggest storms, where the best data can be collected and used to help save lives.

But nothing prepared her for the danger of her first hurricane mission.

Flying at night, Meister and the crew were headed toward Hurricane Rafael in 2012. But because meteorologists have limited ability to analyze satellite data during darkness, there was no … » More …

Winter 2016

Briefly noted

Light in the Trees

Gail Folkins ’85

Texas Tech University Press: 2016

Folkins draws on her experiences growing up in rural western Washington to weave a coming of age tale for both the narrator and the place. The memoir, touching on everything from serial killers and Northwest volcanoes to Sasquatch myths and runaway livestock, glides through past and present while exploring cultural and environmental topics illustrating the changing American West.

The Expanding Universe: A Primer on Relativistic Cosmology

William D. Heacox ’72 MA

Cambridge University Press: 2015

Cosmology, the science of the universe, has seen a renaissance in recent decades. This textbook by … » More …

Winter 2016

In memoriam

1930s

Lois Eleanor Henkins (’35 Office Admin.), 103, July 28, 2016, Spokane.

Thomas A. Golding (’39 Zool.), 97, March 29, 2016, Sequim.

1940s

Harry L. Hokanson (’40 Ag.), 98, April 7, 2016, Chehalis.

Edith Thurley Scheel (’40 Pharm.), 98, August 15, 2016, Vancouver.

Dorothy E. Street (’40 Socio.), 99, May 1, 2016, Portland, Oregon.

Rae G. McCain (’41 Home Econ., ’54 Ed.), 96, June 7, 2016, Spokane.

Paul Bergquist (’42 Elec. Eng.), 96, August 22, 2016, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Jack P. Meiners (’42 Agro., ’46 PhD Plant Path.), 96, April 24, 2016, Silver Spring, Maryland.

Mary McColl Neilson (’42 Socio., Kappa Delta), 95, … » More …

Spring 2011

HaiCoug

A haiku contest with a WSU theme

Winners of the 2011 contest!

CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of the first Washington State Magazine HaiCoug contest, featuring haiku poems with a WSU theme. After reviewing almost 100 entries, we chose first, second, and third place HaiCougs based on how they evoked the WSU experience, followed the haiku structure, and presented a clever or thought provoking twist.

First place goes to Susan Picatti ’74 from Seattle. She wins a gift package from the Bookie.

Two day old Evie
In Dad’s arms; Cougs beat Huskies
The perfect first game.

The second place winner, Susy (Roark) … » More …

Fall 2013

Fatigue at Sea: A Circumnavigator’s Story

Were there a Hall of Fame of Sleep Deprivation, a special place would be reserved for single-handed sailors who routinely rise from their bunks to check their rigs and scan the horizon for oncoming vessels. It’s a reasonable safety precaution. It also invites its own measure of risk by compromising reaction times, hand-eye coordination, and general judgment, the kind of things scientists study at WSU Spokane’s Sleep and Performance Research Center.

As it happens, Lois James MA ’09, PhD ’11, a research assistant professor in the center, is the daughter of Naomi James, the first woman to sail single-handed around the world via … » More …

Fall 2016

From Dresden to Pullman, WSU’s Harvard glass flowers connection

It started with a sea voyage and a jellyfish.

Master glassblower Leopold Blaschka was already a successful maker of glass eyes when he fell ill in 1853. His doctor prescribed time at sea and Blaschka spent the journey from Bohemia to the U.S. and back drawing and studying sea creatures. Back home, Blaschka began making and selling cunningly accurate models of invertebrates, in part because he had already invented glass spinning, a technique that enabled him to create very detailed—and anatomically accurate—glass pieces.

Before the invention of photography, hand-drawn and blown glass models of organisms were highly sought after. Blaschka’s sea creatures were based not … » More …

Fall 2016

Cougs behind the Seahawks

Nearly two weeks before the Seattle Seahawks won Super Bowl XLVIII, Cindy Kelley was arriving in New York to set up a temporary team headquarters that would become like a cross between a satellite office and a MASH unit.

Kelley ’81 and the rest of the advance crew scrambled to keep up with a schedule measured in hours, not days. Telephones, computers, office space, accommodations, meals, air and ground transportation, special events, family activities—all needing to be arranged immediately.

“The whole goal is to make sure there are no distractions for the players and coaches,” says Kelley, vice president for human resources for the » More …