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Why parts of Earth have barely changed in 3 billion years

The last century has seen rapid advances in our understanding of how the Earth formed, and how the movement of continents through plate tectonics continues to shape our lands, oceans and mountain ranges. But geologists are yet to agree on one important question: what was the Earth like before the plates formed?

Catherine 'Katie' Cooper
Cooper

New research by WSU associate professor of geology Katie Cooper and colleagues supports the theory that early Earth was highly volcanically active, and that evidence of the violent transition to plate tectonics can still be seen today.

They may also have solved a second geological mystery: Why are there parts of the Earth that are not affected by plate tectonics?

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Brinkwire

The Science Behind Where Police Should Place Their Body Cameras

As law enforcement increasingly uses body-worn cameras, researchers are studying the roles of camera design and perspective.

Approaching police body cameras from a design and ergonomics perspective is just one example of the ways researchers are starting to delve into the bigger questions associated with body cameras, from artificial intelligence analysis to perspective bias.

David Makin
Makin

David Makin, a criminologist at Washington State University in Pullman, co-founded the Complex Social Interactions (CSI) Lab. Makin is designing algorithms and software to analyze body-worn camera footage. One of the main issues, he says, is that body cam footage is just that — footage. “So you have thousands or tens of thousands of hours that doesn’t get looked at. It gets looked at when there’s an issue, and that’s it.”

Makin sees potential in that raw video. “If we think of it as data, we can deconstruct it and analyze it,” he said. “Then we can approach it as improving training, and improving risk management. Once you see it as data, there is no limit to how beneficial this can be to law enforcement organizations.”

Makin’s CSI Lab has analyzed thousands of police-community interactions on video and numerous records from law enforcement incidents to identify, code and catalog key variables associated with a range of outcomes, positive to negative. Location, lighting, time of day, number of people present, gender, race, verbal and physical stress, and intensity of the interaction are among the contextual factors assessed.

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Inside Science

Restoring a musical relic

College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Thomas LeClair is trying to fix a 91-year-old theatre organ he found languishing in the basement of Webster Physical Sciences building on the Pullman campus.

thomas-leclair-sits-among-the-many-pipes-of-the-old-organ-in-the-basement-of-webster-hall
Thomas LeClair works on the old pipe organ.

A biology and music double-degree student, LeClair discovered the existence of the instrument while thumbing through old files in the WSU Libraries Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections.

“I was looking up information about the organ I practice on in Bryan Hall, and came across a couple of papers about a different and much older organ in Webster,” LeClair said. “I was like, ‘What? That’s the physics building, they don’t have an organ.’ So, I went to the office in Webster and asked about it, and they told me that, yes, they do in fact have an old theatre organ in the basement.”

In 1927, early Pullman developer P.W. Struppler purchased the organ now in Webster to accompany silent movies at the Spanish Colonial style Cordova Theatre, which opened on Grand Avenue in 1928.

The old pipe organ was donated to WSU in 1961 and installed in the physical sciences building in 1975 at the behest of then-chairman of physics Edward Donaldson for studying musical acoustics.

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WSU Insider

WSUV professor describes challenge of raising children in academia

WSU biologist Stephanie Porter’s first child was six months old in 2011 when she and her husband, a fellow scientist, first ventured to an academic conference together.

Stephanie PorterThe results, she said, were a disaster. On-site child care wouldn’t take her infant daughter, Hazel. There were no changing tables in the men’s room, and Porter’s husband was kicked out of the baby room for being a man. And while they did their best to pass Hazel back and forth, Porter usually ended up taking their still exclusively breastfed daughter when there were sessions she and her husband both wanted to attend.

“Honestly, I stopped going to conferences when I had young children,” Porter said.

Porter, an assistant biology professor at WSU Vancouver, is in a national group hoping to level the field for mothers in science, particularly at academic conferences. Under the name “A Working Group of Mothers in Science,” she and 45 other women wrote “How to tackle the childcare-conference conundrum,” an opinion piece published in scientific journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

The article offers a blueprint on ways to make conferences more accommodating to families, like offering adequate child care, providing comfortable lactation rooms and tolerating the presence of babies in conference sessions or at lectures.

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The Columbian

In wake of Cambridge Analytica revelations, new momentum behind Klobuchar’s Honest Ads Act

Last year, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia introduced a bill, called the Honest Ads Act, to regulate online political ads the same way that political ads are regulated on print, TV, and radio — with clear disclosure requirements and a public record of ads.

Travis Ridout
Travis Ridout

Travis Ridout, a Washington State University professor who studies political advertising for the Wesleyan Media Project, says the political moment right now is strongly in favor of fuller disclosure of political advertising. “What the companies are saying is, hey, we’re open to regulation,” he says. “I’m not sure they really want regulation.”

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MinnPost