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Ask Dr. Universe: What is venom?

A lot of different animals, like wasps, spiders, snakes, jellyfish, and scorpions, make venom. Animals like the cone snail, the blue-ringed octopus, and centipedes do, too.

Venom is a mixture of different proteins that can be very toxic to animals. While humans don’t make venom, they do carry around proteins. Proteins called keratin are the building blocks of your hair and nails. The red protein hemoglobin in your blood helps deliver oxygen around your body.

Mark Margres.
Mark Margres

Venom tries to disrupt the systems in our body that help keep us alive, said my friend Mark Margres. He was a post-doctoral researcher in biological sciences at Washington State University and now works at Clemson University.

In his work as a scientist, he’s also studied the venomous eastern diamondback rattlesnake. It is the largest of the 32 species in the rattlesnake family. It’s about four or five feet long. Snake venom is one of the kinds of venom scientists know the most about. Margres has collected thousands of samples of rattlesnake venom and he said proteins in the venom can do different things.

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Dr. Universe

Archaeology offers insights into climate change strategies

Once again, humanity might be well served to take heed from a history lesson. When the climate changed, when crops failed and famine threatened, the peoples of ancient Asia responded. They moved. They started growing different crops. They created new trade networks and innovated their way to solutions in other ways too.

Kyle Bocinsky.
Kyle Bocinsky

So suggests new research by former WSU anthropologist Jade d’Alpoim Guedes and Kyle Bocinsky, an alumnus (PhD ’14) and adjunct faculty member in the Department of Anthropology, a senior researcher with the Village Ecodynamics Project, and the William D. Lipe Chair in Research with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado.

Their paper, published in the journal Science Advances, describes a computer model they developed that shows for the first time when and where in Asia staple crops would have thrived or fared poorly between 5,000 and 1,000 years ago.

When the climate cooled, people moved away or turned to pastoralism—herds can thrive in grassland where food grains can’t. And they turned to trade. These strategies eventually coalesced into the development of the Silk Road, d’Alpoim Guedes and Bocinsky argue. In some areas they also diversified the types of crops they planted.

With their new computer model, the researchers were able to examine in detail how changing climate transformed people’s ability to produce food in particular places, and that enabled them to get at the causes of cultural shift.

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Ecologists ask: Should we be more transparent with data?

Computational reproducibility—the ability to accurately reproduce outcomes from data sets using the same code and software—will be an increasingly important factor in future scientific studies according to a new paper released in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Ecological Applications.

Stephanie Hampton.
Stephanie Hampton
Stephen Steve Powers.
Stephen Powers

Authors Stephen M. Powers and Stephanie E. Hampton, researchers in environmental science at Washington State University, highlight the importance of adapting to, providing, and using data sets that are open to and usable by the public and investigators in ecology and other field research.

“Increasingly, peers and the public want more transparency,” Powers explains.

Ecologists, finding themselves in an inherently field-oriented science, have long faced the challenge that it is impossible to perfectly repeat observational studies of the natural world—weather conditions vary, populations change over time, and many other conditions in field work are not reproducible. The paper argues that ecologists should focus more on data sharing and transparency in the future in order to increase scientific reproducibility.

An investigator may spend considerable time, effort, and cost attempting to generate results of someone else’s study from scratch. When both data and code used to obtain statistics and results are published, the investigator saves on these efforts, and can even improve or modify the original author’s computer code. Essentially, sharing this information means less time is wasted for reviewers, editors, and authors alike.

It’s not only scientists that benefit from reproducibility and transparency; “In natural resource management and similar policy issues, high transparency is essential to maintain public trust,” says Hampton, who is also director for the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Being open about data and code from the beginning of a project can help scientists minimize post-publication work to share or clarify the products or to answer questions about contentious results from outside audiences.

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Molecular analysis turns up an unexpected twist in smoking habits of ancient tribes

Tobacco plays a big role in Native American history and culture, predating Christopher Columbus’ arrival by well more than a millennium. But what did ancient tribes smoke? And can history help modern-day tribes put tobacco in its proper place?

A newly published study by Washington State University researchers traces the smoking habits of indigenous peoples in southeastern Washington state over the course of centuries, based on a molecular analysis of residue extracted from smoking pipes found at archaeological sites.

Shannon Tushingham.
Shannon Tushingham

“This is the longest continuous biomolecular record of ancient tobacco smoking from a single region anywhere in the world—initially during an era of pithouse development, through the late pre-contact equestrian era, and into the historic period,” the research team, led by WSU anthropologist Shannon Tushingham, reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Back when Columbus got his first taste of tobacco, Native Americans viewed smoking as a ceremonial and religious ritual, marking occasions that ranged from prayers to peace treaties.

Today’s dominant strain of commercial tobacco, known by the scientific name Nicotiana tabacum, was introduced to tribes in the western United States by European settlers in the 1800s. Before contact, Western tribes ranging from Alaska to California used instead wild strains of tobacco, such as N. quadrivalvis (Indian tobacco) and N. attenuata (coyote tobacco).

Some tribes also were known to smoke an entirely different kind of plant called kinnikinnick or bearberry (which is now a popular ornamental plant for Northwest gardens).

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Spokane voting heavy in early balloting

Spokane County voters are sending in their general election ballots in record numbers, far ahead of previous midterm elections and even ahead of 2008, when the county set a modern-day record for turnout.

Whether that’s good news for Democratic challengers like congressional candidate Lisa Brown or Republican incumbents like Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers remains to be seen.

Cornell Clayton.
Clayton

“This would suggest a wave election,” said Cornell Clayton, professor of political science and director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Public Policy and Public Service at Washington State University.

Wave elections tend to favor candidates from the party other than the president, Clayton said, and that would be Democrats like Brown. But there are more Republican voters overall in Eastern Washington.

The 58,238 ballots received by Thursday afternoon represent more than 18 percent of those mailed to county voters last week.

Predictions of an election surge benefiting Democrats—the so-called blue wave—are based on President Donald Trump’s relatively low approval rating, the Democratic advantage in generic polls asking voters which party they prefer, and higher reported enthusiasm among Democrats, Clayton said.

But Republicans are trying to make a comeback, and Trump is “doing everything he can” to encourage that, he added.

“We’re in uncharted political waters,” Clayton said. “Things are incredibly polarized.”

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