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Events planned for historic photo exhibit at WSU that features Yakima Valley farmworkers

An exhibition featuring historic photos of Yakima Valley farmworkers and their lives and struggles will formally open with a reception and other events Oct. 7.

“Our Stories, Our Lives: Irwin Nash Photographs of Yakima Valley Migrant Labor” debuted with a soft opening in late May at Washington State University in Pullman.

Lipi Turner-Rahman.
Turner-Rahman

The formal opening is from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Oct. 7 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, 1535 NE Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB. A reception will follow from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Events will include a conversation with WSU history instructor and guest curator Lipi Turner-Rahman, which will be livestreamed via YouTube.

The exhibition of 45 photographs from the Irwin Nash Yakima Valley Migrant Labor Collection will remain on display through March 11. It’s in collaboration with WSU Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU.

There are more than 9,400 images in the collection. Most came to the university on more than 300 individual sets of film strip negatives and corresponding contact print proof sheets, according to a collection description.

The entire collection has been digitized. Members of the public have helped identify relatives — and themselves — in multiple photos, but many more need to be identified.

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Yakima Herald

Increasing evidence that bears are not carnivores

Given a choice, captive bears mimic mixed diets of their wild peers.

Bears are not cats or dogs, and feeding them like they are likely shortens their lives.

A new study in Scientific Reports on the diets of giant pandas and sloth bears adds more evidence that bears are omnivores like humans and need a lot less protein than they are typically fed in zoos.

Charles Robbins.
Robbins

“Bears are not carnivores in the strictest sense like a cat where they consume a high-protein diet,” said lead author Charles Robbins, a Washington State University wildlife biology professor. “In zoos forever, whether it’s polar bears, brown bears or sloth bears, the recommendation has been to feed them as if they are high-protein carnivores. When you do that, you kill them slowly.”

In separate experiments, researchers presented captive giant pandas and sloth bears at different U.S. zoos with unlimited food of different types to see their preferences and then recorded the nutritional profiles of their choices.

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WSU Insider
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Platinum really is forever

Scientists at WSU’s Institute for Shock Physics discovered something unexpected when they tested humankind’s most valuable metals to see how much pressure they could take.

It turns out platinum is the only precious metal that retains its atomic structure when subjected to the kind of pressure found at the center of planet Earth, holding up better than gold.

Yogendra Gupta.
Gupta

“No one really expected this. We thought that gold was stable forever, but it turns out it changes into a different related crystal structure under enough shock wave pressure,” said Yogendra Gupta, director of the Institute for Shock Physics at WSU. “So basically, if you want a material that will never change no matter what then store platinum.”

It’s this kind of intellectual curiosity and commitment to scientific discovery that has helped bring international acclaim to WSU’s Shock Physics research. And it demonstrates the unique capabilities of the Chicago-based Dynamic Compression Sector (DCS), a facility designed and built by WSU that enabled the experiments to be conducted.

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WSU Insider

WSU scientists to study how pathogens spread through live animal trade

In the wake of a pandemic that has ties to the wildlife trade, a research team from five universities recently received a $2.75 million grant to study how biological, social, and economic factors influence the pathogen spread through animal trade networks.

The project is being funded by the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Program, a joint program of the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The goal of the study is to identify how socio-economic decisions and pathogen dynamics impact each other in the wildlife trade network, focusing on the amphibian pet trade. The study aims to inform policies that support biodiversity conservation and prevent future pandemics.

Jonah Piovia-Scott.
Piovia-Scott

“The global wildlife trade is a major pathway for the spread of diseases that affect both humans and wildlife”, said Jonah Piovia‑Scott, associate professor at Washington State University Vancouver. “Our research focuses on the amphibian pet trade, but we expect it to yield insights about the biological and socioeconomic factors that influence the movement of pathogens through other kinds of wildlife trade networks.”

Jesse Brunner.
Brunner

Piovia‑Scott is a co‑principal investigator from WSU on the project along with Jesse Brunner, associate professor at WSU Pullman. Both are from WSU’s School of Biological Sciences.

The evolution, emergence, and spread of novel pathogens has been widely discussed even before the first case of COVID‑19 was reported in 2019. Many infectious disease outbreaks, like that of monkeypox, chronic wasting disease, and COVID‑19, have been linked to the wildlife trade.

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WSU Insider

Expert: Over-promising, under-delivering likely to continue

Regardless of which party wins a majority in Congress this year, Frances Lee doesn’t see much chance of a landslide victory or clear mandate emerging from the ballot box.

If that’s the case, then voters should be prepared for more broken promises.

Lee, a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, said “over-promising and under-delivering” has become a common theme in Congress over the past 40 years, partly because neither party has enjoyed a sustained majority.

“Parties continue to message their disagreement with one another, and they promise supporters the moon and the stars, but their record of accomplishment is underwhelming, even in unified governments,” she said Tuesday, during a talk at Washington State University’s Foley Institute.

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Lewiston Tribune