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Ask Dr. Universe: Why are there so many palm trees in California?

Along with beaches, sunshine, and movie stars, a lot of people picture palm trees when they think of southern California. While there are lots of palm tree species in California, they aren’t all originally from the area. Many were brought from different places around the world.

Chuck Cody.
Cody

That’s what I found out from my friend Chuck Cody, a biologist who manages some of the greenhouses at Washington State University.

Believe it or not, Washington state also used to be home to lots of palm trees. In the Jacklin Collection Museum at WSU, there are all kinds of petrified wood. One of the pieces is fossilized palm wood from central Washington. Fossils can give us a lot of clues about what life was like before humans were around.

Cody also told me that in prehistoric times, during the earliest days of flowering plants on our planet, palms were a big part of the natural landscapes. This was back more than 145 million years ago when dinosaurs like Iguanodon and Ankylosaurs roamed the earth.

In Washington, palm trees were common 15 million years ago and were able to survive during a time when the climate wasn’t so cold. But as you’ve observed, California is the place that’s home to a lot of palm trees these days.

While the California Fan Palm is a native palm of California, Cody told me that people started bringing other species of palm trees to California around 200 years ago.

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Dr. Universe

Study shows that cannabis combats stress, anxiety and depression

A Washington State University study has examined how cannabis combats stress, anxiety and depression by looking at different strains and quantities of cannabis being inhaled by patients at home.

The work, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, suggests that inhaling cannabis can significantly reduce short-term levels of depression, anxiety, and stress but may contribute to worse overall feelings of depression over time.

Carrie Cuttler.
Cuttler

This new study, led by Carrie Cuttler, WSU clinical assistant professor of psychology, is one of the first attempts by United States scientists to assess how cannabis with varying concentrations of THC and CBD affect medicinal cannabis users’ feelings of wellbeing when inhaled outside of a laboratory.

Previous research to see whether cannabis combats stress and anxiety has be done with THC only strains that have been put into a capsule – but this study looks at the impact of cannabis when it is inhaled.

“Existing research on the effects of cannabis on depression, anxiety and stress are very rare and have almost exclusively been done with orally administered THC pills in a laboratory,” Cuttler said. “What is unique about our study is that we looked at actual inhaled cannabis by medical marijuana patients who were using it in the comfort of their own homes as opposed to a laboratory.”

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HealthEuropa

420 Intel
The Fresh Toast

‘BAM! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement’ screenings in Vancouver and Pullman

Two Washington State University Vancouver professors have chronicled one of America’s preeminent artistic and cultural movements in a new film and will screen it on two campuses this month.

“BAM! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement” introduces viewers to more than a dozen writers, artists, musicians and community organizers who were instrumental in the campaign centered on black pride and aesthetic. People like poet Eugene Redmond, musician Mwata Bowden, and Dr. Safisha Madhubuti, who founded four African-centered schools and went on to teach at Northwestern University before retiring in 2018.

Pavithra Narayanan.
Narayanan
Thabiti Lewis.
Lewis

“BAM!” is the brainchild of Thabiti Lewis, WSU associate professor of English, who met many of the important figures in the movement in his 20s while working for Third World Press in Chicago – founded in 1967 as a platform for black literature.

“They were committed to making a positive impact in their community,” Lewis said of the movement’s leaders. “The Civil Rights struggle reached its apex during the Black Arts Movement and people in Chicago were concerned with the community’s needs in terms of resources and creating art that impacted the souls, minds and spirits of those around them.”

Lewis began working on “BAM! Chicago’s Black Arts Movement” while writing a book on the same subject. He enlisted help with the film from English department colleague Pavithra Narayanan.

It will be screened at WSU Vancouver at 3:45 p.m. Sept. 10 in room 110 of Dengerink Administration Building and on the Pullman campus at 5 p.m. Sept. 11 in room 5062 of the Fine Arts Building. Q&A sessions with the filmmakers are scheduled to follow both screenings.

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WSU Insider

New round of Amazon Catalyst Grants awarded to WSU innovators and entrepreneurs

The Amazon Catalyst Program at Washington State University has awarded nearly $20,000 in grants to two teams comprised of research faculty and students from varied university disciplines and locations.

Team Cross-Cultural Optics and team Virtual Reality 360 received grants for their innovative solutions to specific problems posed by Amazon. Launched in 2018, the collaborative program between Amazon and WSU funds projects with potential global impact. This year, applicants were asked to consider the themes of urban transportation and computational social science and submit innovative ideas that have the possibility for big change in these areas.

Closeup of Julie Kmec
Julie Kmec

Team Cross-Cultural Optics, led by Julie Kmec, professor of sociology, was awarded a grant to develop a virtual reality environment that enables female engineers based in the U.S. to explore engineering spaces elsewhere in the world that have higher levels of engineering participation by women. In the U.S., women hold 24% of engineering degrees but represent only 18% of the engineering labor force. Cross-cultural Optics aims to create a visual world and set of narratives that will provide users an opportunity to experience the stories of other engineers in countries across the globe where women represent a higher percentage of the engineering student body and workforce; enabling them to share testimonies, seek advice, learn from others’ experiences, and problem solve.

 

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WSU Insider

Ask Dr. Universe: Why do people have different accents? Why do we have them and need them?

Whether you say hello, ‘ello, hey ya’ll, toe-may-toe or toe-ma-toe, we all have a kind of accent that often comes from where we live or who lives around us.

Nancy Bell.
Bell

That’s what I found out from my friend Nancy Bell, a Washington State University professor of linguistics and English as a second language who is really curious about the way language works. She told me more about why we have accents and why we need them.

There are a lot of different accents. You might have friends who speak English but have a Scottish, Irish, Australian, or French accent.

Even in the U.S., there are many accents from the east to the west to the mid-west to the south. In those regions, people also speak many types of English such as Chicano English, African American English, or Indian English.

A lot of times when you see a difference in the way people talk, there is also some kind of physical barrier between them. This might be something like a mountain, a river, or the Atlantic Ocean that separates you and me. When groups of people are isolated from each other, they develop unique ways of speaking, including accents and whole new languages.

We also have social barriers, Bell said. We sometimes see differences in the way people talk when groups are segregated from each other. These social barriers still persist today.

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Dr. Universe