WSU music instructor and player of fiddle, mandolin, and guitar Richard Kriehn travels with Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio roadshow as a musician. Watch a video of his experiences and how he applies what he learns to his teaching at WSU.
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Kathleen Flenniken ’83 describes and reads from her second collection of poetry Plume, published by the University of Washington Press in 2012, in this video produced by her son Alexander Flenniken ’11.
Set off by images of the Atomic City, Flenniken’s hometown of Richland, Washington, she documents her coming of age and eventually her work at Hanford in the heart of the nuclear age.
Recently Flenniken was named Washington’s poet laureate for 2012-14. She teaches poetry and is a co-editor and president of Floating Bridge Press. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
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Liv Haselbach, associate professor with Washington State University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, researches concrete surfaces that can absorb water, rather than allowing water to run off and cause pollution, flooding, or other problems.
Haselbach says, “WSU has been installing various sections of pervious concrete and porous asphalt on the Pullman campus to see how they might help with stormwater management on campus and prevent icing conditions in the winter. Researchers in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department are monitoring various aspects of the placements, and are also testing the materials in their laboratories to determine other environmental benefits, including … » More …
Sue Cobey, a bee breeder who splits her time between Washington State University and the University of California at Davis, where she manages the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, describes instrumental insemination of honey bee queens.
Cobey developed the New World Carniolan honey bee stock in the 1980s, and is one of the world’s top experts on honey bee queens, genetic diversity, and inseminating bees.
Taking archeology a step beyond traditional pottery shards, Brian Kemp analyzes ancient DNA (aDNA) from bones, teeth, and desiccated feces (coprolites) to help bring prehistoric Native American cultures alive in ways never before possible. As a molecular anthropologist, Kemp compares archeological findings with genetic information to detect past demographic shifts, population interactions, and movements throughout the Americas.
By plotting aDNA together with artifacts in the ground, specific tribes in the Southwest can be seen to virtually travel across the high desert through the eons. The picture Kemp paints seems so real that one can almost hear the hunter-gatherer songs and shouts drifting in the air.
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David Simon, creator of gritty urban HBO drama The Wire, received the William Julius Wilson Award for the Advancement of Social Justice in September 2011. The award is named after eminent Harvard sociologist and Washington State University alumnus William Julius Wilson ’66 PhD.
When accepting the award at WSU, Simon spoke about building a just and equitable society, and the difficulties in achieving that goal.
You can read more about Simon’s visit to campus in “The Wire: Urban drama, gritty reality, and Soc 496 ‘textbook’”
Time: 1 hr. 57 min.
Note: The video contains expletives.
Video courtesy KWSU
Most parents work hard to prepare nutritious, well-balanced meals for their children. But, once the children sit down to eat, what can parents do to help them learn how to eat healthy? What can parents say and do to encourage children to try new foods and to prevent them from overeating?
Research has identified three common feeding styles among parents of young children. By observing families, we have found which of these styles is the most successful in helping children eat healthy.
See how these feeding styles work—or don’t work—in common situations in the home.
An insect’s small size gives it the gift of relatively greater strength. The newly discovered South African cockroach Saltoblattella montistabularis takes advantage of this fact plus several other features, as Washington State University entomologist Carol Anelli describes here:
This is very cool for several reasons.
It is a wingless cockroach, described for the first time only two years ago, and the first existing roach known to jump. It achieves this feat with modified hind legs that possess long femurs invested with enlarged muscles. These long femurs—akin to the longest bone in the human body—help give grasshoppers their great jumping ability.
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On-going research at Washington State University is exploring how homes can be built or retrofitted to make living a little bit easier. With the work of AI Lab Manager James Kusznir, doctoral student Aaron Crandall and other faculty and students, WSU’s Smart Apartment is exploring the practical applications of how to help elderly people stay in their homes, and to create more efficient living spaces.
From WSU News; video by Matt Haugen
When Memory Fades (Winter 2011)
Using technology to address the challenges of aging … » More …
Pacific Northwest architect Jim Olson designs homes built for art. In this video he talks about early inspiration, the relationships between art and architecture, and the Northwest aesthetic.
Read more about Olson, and the retrospective of his career at the Washington State University Museum of Art in “Homes for Art.”