In the first study of its kind, WSU researchers found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate, the world’s most popular weed killer. The researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities. Michael Skinner, professor […]
After leading police on a slippery, high-speed chase through snowy Spokane neighborhoods, running red lights and stop signs, driving through a resident’s yard, and slamming his stolen Subaru into a Jeep, a chronic car thief finally was caught, several minutes — and thousands of dollars in property damage — later. Could anything have been done […]
“YAZZ Band,” the recently released compact disc from Greg Yasinitsky, Regents Professor of music, has received significant national attention, including a feature in Down Beat magazine — the “Jazz Bible” — and on the Public Radio International show “Jazz After Hours.” The disc also features WSU School of Music faculty members Sarah Miller, Brian Ward and […]
With a handle of skunkbush and a cactus‑spine business end, the tool was made around 2,000 years ago by the Ancestral Pueblo people of the Basketmaker II period in what is now southeastern Utah. Andrew Gillreath‑Brown, an anthropology PhD candidate, chanced upon the pen‑sized instrument while taking an inventory of archaeological materials that had been sitting in storage […]
As the patriotic fervor from World War I began to subside, students at then-Washington State College found themselves uninspired by the songs associated with the school. Two senior music students, Zella Melcher of Spokane, Wash., and Phyllis Sayles of Lapwai, Idaho, took on the task of writing new music to energize the student body. “They debuted their creation to great […]
Leveraging the power of data analytics, WSU sociologist Erik Johnson teased apart the opinions of more than 20,000 people over more than four decades and found support for environmental spending consistently plummeted during the administrations of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats all. Johnson made his discovery using a statistical analysis that looked at poll respondents […]
Rapid global cooling 13,000 years ago challenged early occupants of Alaska to adapt. People used to hunting mammoths and other megafauna with big stone tools suddenly found their weapons shattering in the cold. Access to the stone they used to make them got buried under snow. As with any climactic change, the cold resulted in […]
The breeding seasons of wild house finches are shifting due to climate change, a Washington State University researcher has found. The effect of climate change on the breeding season of birds has been documented before, but in a limited context. Heather Watts, an avian physiologist, reported her finding in Ibis, the International Journal of Avian […]
WSU researchers have reverse engineered the way a pine tree produces a resin, which could serve as an environmentally friendly alternative to a range of fossil‑fuel based products worth billions of dollars. Colleagues in the Institute for Biological Chemistry literally dissected the machinery by which loblolly pine produces oleoresin. Key aspects of their work utilized […]
Stories, photos, paintings, and belongings like baskets and tools tell the rich history of Plateau tribes of the inland Pacific Northwest, a history now shared online. The Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, a gateway to those cultural materials, is maintained by Washington State University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC) in partnership with WSU’s Native […]