Skip to main content Skip to navigation
CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

Student’s paper on antibiotic resistance receives 2019 Library Research Award

Headlines warning of the dangers of antibiotic resistance appear in the news almost every day. The United Nations predicted that by 2050, 10 million people could die each year from diseases that have become resistant to drugs.

Miles Roberts.
Roberts

Miles Roberts wanted to know how science is working to counter this trend. So, for his Biology 402 class in spring semester, he reviewed 65 scientific articles and turned his research into a paper called “Maximizing Costs to Prevent Antibiotic Resistance Evolution.” His thorough investigation resulted in a perfect score in class and also WSU Vancouver’s 2019 Library Research Award.

The annual award recognizes students who excel in using the library. Roberts, a senior who will graduate in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and minors in math and chemistry, said he took maximum advantage of the library’s “wonderful online resources.”

Library director Karen Diller described the paper as “an excellent example of a scientific review paper and one that is working on a critical societal problem.” Noting that Roberts had identified key current research and synthesized it “in a logical, ethical and readable way,” she said he had also demonstrated breakthroughs in his own understanding of the research process.

Find out more

WSU Insider

Dear Dr. Universe: Why do flowers smell so nice?

Rachel Bonoan.
Bonoan

Flowers not only smell nice to humans, but also to many insects and birds who help the flowers do a really important job, according to Rachael Bonoan, a scientist with the Conservation Biology Laboratory at Washington State University.

Let’s imagine that you are a bee or a butterfly. You don’t have a nose on your face, but instead use your two antennae to smell things.

As you fly around, you catch a whiff of chemicals floating in the air. Down below, you see a field of daisies. The flowers are releasing some chemicals, which are the building blocks of a smell.

You fly down to the field and land on a daisy’s petal. It’s just what the flower wanted you to do.

Not only can you drink nectar from the flower to get some energy, but you can help the flower get ready to produce even more flowers.

As you sip on the daisy’s sweet, liquid nectar, the hairs on your body start picking up pollen, sticky grains on the flower. If you are imagining yourself as a bee, you might also use your front legs to put the grains into your pollen baskets, or pollen pants, near your back legs.

Find out more

Dr. Universe

WSU Vancouver statistician to help international whale conservation effort

Leslie New.
New

Leslie New, a WSU Vancouver assistant professor of statistics who specializes in the impacts of humans on wildlife, has been named to a scientific panel studying endangered whales found in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Russia’s Sakhalin Island.

New will spend three years on the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel, an independent scientific advisory body to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. She and her fellow panelists will look for ways to assess and manage the impacts of the region’s oil, gas and fishing industries, evaluate ways to monitor the whale population, and study underwater noise from seismic surveys, vessel traffic and other sources.

It’s a career moment for New, who studied the IUCN in graduate school, wondering at the time how one got involved in its research.

“The goal of my research program has always been the application of statistics to help protect wildlife populations,” she said. “I am excited about being given such a wonderful chance to really put that into practice, building the tools needed to manage an endangered population, while advancing our understanding of science at the same time. It is a wonderful place to be.”

Find out more

WSU Insider

3 CAS faculty awarded WSU seed grants

Washington State University has awarded 10 New Faculty Seed Grants (NFSG) to encourage the development of research, scholarly, or creative programs. The program supports projects that will significantly contribute to the researchers’ long range goals by kick-starting a more complex project or idea. The seed funding to junior faculty helps build the foundation for their research programs, allowing recipients to gather preliminary data, build collaborations, or establish creative programs. The funding also effectively provides a basis for faculty to seek extramural funding as well as opportunities for professional growth.

The Office of Research, the Office of the President, and the Office of the Provost fund the NFSG program. The 10 proposals selected this year represent the range of scholarly activity taking place at WSU. The total amount of grant funding is $212,524.

Awarded faculty and their projects include:

  • Deepti Singh, School of the Environment, will analyze the influence of multiple climate factors that govern the extent, severity, and duration of the impacts wildfires have on air quality and water resources.
  • Joe Hedges, Department of Fine Arts, will create and exhibit a new body of innovative intermedia art works that combine oil painting and new media objects, such as flatscreen televisions and tablets.
  • Rock Mancini, Department of Chemistry, will develop a new type of reaction to generate synthetic-biologic hybrids, enabling the synthesis of many new biomolecule therapeutics.

Find out more

WSU Insider

 

Makah one step closer to hunting whales: Animal rights extremists continue to oppose it

After 25 years of legal maneuvering, the Makah are now one year away from resuming a tradition central to their culture and identity, the hunting of gray whales. The long, public battle involving hearings and lawsuits, false starts and conflicts that regularly appeared in headlines since 1994, will finally be over. But what most people won’t see is how it began decades before with a winter storm.

In February 1970, a fierce storm pummeled the northwestern tip of Washington state. Wind and rain scoured a small coastal area about ten miles south of Neah Bay near Ozette Lake. Six Makah longhouses previously buried for hundreds of years appeared on the surface.

Ed Claplanhoo, a Makah tribal elder, contacted an archeologist from Washington State University named Richard Daugherty, who had previously surveyed the site. Daugherty came and examined the remains of the longhouses and realized that, although collapsed, they were almost perfectly preserved. A massive mudslide hundreds of years before had covered them, preventing deterioration. The longhouses and the artifacts they contained became known as “the Pompeii of America.”

For the next 11 years, Daugherty and other archeologists, as well as students from the Makah tribe, painstakingly excavated the site, carefully unearthing and cataloging 55,000 artifacts. Many were made of whalebone or were in some way related to whaling. This verified what anthropologists long suspected and what the tribe knew for a certainty. The Makah were primarily whaling people.

Find out more

Indian Country Today