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A new way to curb global warming hides beneath the Earth’s surface

Marc Kramer, an associate professor of environmental chemistry at Washington State University Vancouver, has discovered that one-fourth of carbon within the Earth’s soil is bound to minerals about six feet below the surface. This revelation could lead to new ways to deal with the influx of carbon due to global warming.

Marc Kramer.
Kramer

Kramer, who made this discovery with help from his colleague Oliver Chadwick, a soil scientist at the University of California Santa Barbara, explained via his study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, that water dissolves organic carbon and pulls in deep into the soil. There, the carbon is physically and chemically bound to certain minerals.

Kramer estimates that 600 billion metric tons (known as gigatons) of carbon is currently underneath the Earth’s surface — that amount is more than twice the carbon added into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Most of this carbon is underneath the world’s wettest forests, which unfortunately, won’t absorb as much carbon as atmospheric temperatures continue to rise.

This “major breakthrough” discovery, as Kramer called it, is a starting point for the process of moving atmospheric carbon underground as climate change and global warming progresses. However, there is still major work to be done.

“We know less about the soils on Earth than we do about the surface of Mars. Before we can start thinking about storing carbon in the ground, we need to actually understand how it gets there and how likely it is to stick around,” Kramer said. “This finding highlights a major breakthrough in our understanding.”

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The Columbian

 

Dr. Universe: Who created the very first chocolate bar?

For most of human history, people have enjoyed chocolate in a spicy, bitter drink. But when people discovered how to turn chocolate into a solid, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

Omar Cornejo.
Cornejo

That’s what I found out from my friend Omar Cornejo, a scientist at Washington State University who is very curious about the history and life of the cacao tree. Chocolate comes from the seeds of leathery fruits that grow on the tree.

If we cut open the fruit, we would find about 20 to 60 seeds on the inside. In ancient times, people would grind up the seeds and use them in a drink.

“When Europeans arrived to the Americas they found the indigenous people who were drinking this delicious thing,” Cornejo said. “It was bitter and interesting. They didn’t use sugar.”

It wasn’t until Europeans returned home that they added sugar to make it more drinkable. The drink was very popular among royalty. But engineers and scientists who lived during the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s and early 1800s helped find new ways to produce it so it could be enjoyed by everyone.

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Dr. Universe

Washington Had High Voter Turnout This Year. Except A Few Counties Like Yakima. Why?

As election season simmers down, data rolls in. This year, nearly half of eligible U.S. voters cast ballots. That may not sound like much, but it is the highest voter turnout for a midterm election since the 1960s.

In Washington, most counties saw higher than average voter turnout this year. Except two.

Yakima County had the lowest voter turnout in the state at 37 percent. Skagit County had the second lowest.

Meanwhile, counties like Jefferson and Garfield had the highest at 82 percent. On average, 66 percent of Washington voters came out this year.

Travis Ridout.
Travis Ridout

Washington State University political science professor Travis Ridout thinks demographics has something to do with voting patterns.

“I suspect we see lower turnout in Yakima County, and there’s a large Hispanic population,” Ridout said. “Hispanics just don’t vote at the rate of other people. Not just in Washington state, that’s true nationally as well.”

He thinks how politicians reach out to Hispanic/Latino constituents also has something to do with it. Ridout calls it a “chicken and egg” problem. Hispanic voters don’t show up at the polls, so politicians don’t reach out to them. And because Hispanic voters don’t feel like most candidates appeal to them, they don’t vote.

There’s also potential language barriers that keep some voters from participating, the lack of  civic engagement historically, and even voter suppression.

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Northwest Public Radio

Vietnam War veterans’ kids say Agent Orange impact ‘a nightmare’

More than 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, children of the men and women who served say they are battling a new war for benefits as they grapple with the impact of toxic exposure to chemicals that have wreaked havoc on their lives.

Agent Orange is a term that is used to describe a series of odorless herbicides that were used by the U.S. military to defoliate hiding places, fields and rice paddies that were used by the Viet Cong for survival.

Michael Skinner portrait.
Michael Skinner

Dr. Michael Skinner, with Washington State University’s Center for Reproductive biology, has studied the transgenerational health effects of dioxin exposure using animals and says women who served in Vietnam and were exposed to Agent Orange could have passed the dioxin to children for at least 15 to 20 years after they returned home.

“The problem with dioxin or Agent Orange is that it stays in the system for a very long period of time.”

He also says through his research he’s seen dioxin passed through sperm to the offspring in animals. His concern is not with the veterans who returned home or their children but with their grandchildren.

“We have examples where there is no disease in the first generation but there’s huge numbers of disease and the third generation,” he said.

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Regional Daily News

Experts: President’s influence could be seen all over midterms

Political science professors offer their takes on this year’s election at WSU discussion.

There is no denying the midterm elections were heavily influenced by President Donald Trump, and while Democrats earned victories, the night ended better than Republicans feared, political experts said during a forum Wednesday at Washington State University.

Travis Ridout.
Ridout
Mark Stephan.
Stephan

Mark Stephan and Travis Ridout, professors in the WSU School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, and John Wilkerson, a professor in the University of Washington Department of Political Science, gave their opinion on the midterms to a crowd of more than 50 in an event organized by The Foley Institute.

The panel of experts also noted it is typical for the president’s party to lose seats in the house during an election, so this year was not unusual in that regard.

Across the country, political divisions were solidified even more. Stephan said Minnesota is now the only state in the country where the Legislature is divided by Republicans and Democrats. All other statehouses are controlled by one party.

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Moscow-Pullman Daily News