CAS Story Hub

Dr. Universe: How do we get our personality?

Everyone is different. Maybe you are adventurous, shy, outgoing, funny, or kind. Before you were even born, your unique personality was beginning to take shape. That’s what I found out from my friend Chris Barry, a psychologist at Washington State University. He studies personality in young people, including how people express themselves on social media. He […]

History professors launch community conversations

WSU Vancouver history professor Sue Peabody and adjunct professor Donna Sinclair were looking at the demographic records of Clark County, Washington, and noticed some surprising facts. The local population has more than doubled in the past three decades, from 221,654 to nearly 500,000 in 2017. And while more than half (54 percent) of the current […]

Life always finds a way

For the first time, researchers have seen life rebounding in the world’s driest desert, demonstrating that it could also be lurking in the soils of Mars. Led by Washington State University planetary scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an international team studied the driest corner of South America’s Atacama Desert, where decades pass without any rain. Scientists have […]

Nicotine identified in ancient dental plaque

A team of scientists including researchers from Washington State University has shown for the first time that nicotine residue can be extracted from plaque, also known as “dental calculus”, on the teeth of ancient tobacco users. Their research provides a new method for determining who was consuming tobacco in the ancient world and could help […]

Sue Clark appointed to DOE environmental committee

Sue Clark, an internationally recognized leader in the nuclear sciences, has been appointed to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee to evaluate the U.S. Department of Energy’s cleanup technology development efforts. Clark, a Regents Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at WSU, also serves as Chief Science and Technology Officer for Energy and […]

Podcast series makes visiting artists accessible any time

Squeak Meisel, the chair of the Department of Fine Arts and a renowned sculptor, has a confession to make about his podcast series, “Fly on the Wall.” “I stole this idea from my friend Spencer Moody,” he says. Moody, a punk and noise rock musician and artist late of Seattle and now living in Los […]

Golden and Diamond Grads: What a time it was!

One by one, they share memories of curfews, 42-cent dinner dates at the CUB, the JFK assassination, and the birth of women’s lib. A few regale listeners with the infamous tale of the 1964 “Pot Push,” which had nothing to do with cannabis. These are just a sample of the treats recorded at the Diamond […]

Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition welcomed millions of people to Chicago to celebrate the rise of industrial America, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival on the continent, and the romanticization of the “frontier” West. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his thesis that the western advance into a wild and savage frontier defined the American spirit, […]

To catch a cat

Trekking through one of the largest unexplored rainforests in the world, La Mosquitia in Honduras, Travis King set up traps last spring to catch jaguars—or whatever other animal came into range of the cameras. King, a WSU environmental science graduate student, was one of 12 biologists conducting the first biological survey of the area known as La Ciudad […]

Bridging world history: African metalworking, Caribbean foods, and more

Although she spent much of her career in administrative positions, history professor Candice Goucher has always thought of herself as a scholar first and foremost. Her research combines the theories and methods of history, archaeology, ethnography, art history, ecology and chemistry. She is well known for her books and articles on African foodways, metallurgy, and […]