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Bear Butter: Scientists Study Tiny Moths As Rich Food Source For Grizzlies

A diverse team of international scientists led by a Washington State University graduate student are trekking the high peaks of the greater Glacier National Park ecosystem this summer to better understand a tiny but important food source for grizzly bears—the army cutworm moth.

Daniel Thornton.
Thornton

Erik Peterson, a master’s student in the School of the Environment, partnered with Daniel Thornton, WSU professor in the School of the Environment, and seven colleagues to collect data, map, and model the alpine habitats where grizzlies forage on moths by the thousands, finding calorie-rich meals in mid-summer.

“Glacier National Park is a grizzly mecca,” said Peterson, a former field biologist for the park. Glacier is a microcosm for the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which includes Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada, and Akamina-Kishinena Provincial Park in British Columbia and is home to as many as 1,000 bears.

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Daily Fly

WSU Insider

Farm Progress

 

Seven WSU faculty elected to Washington State Academy of Sciences

A third of this year’s class of new members in the Washington State Academy of Sciences (WSAS) are from Washington State University.

Alair MacLean.
MacLean

Alair MacLean, associate professor of sociology at WSU Vancouver, is among the newest cohort and was selected for her significant contributions to the study of veterans of the armed forces serving in war and peace time, and contributions to understanding who serves and how military service shapes their lives with respect to their employment and earnings as well as physical and mental health across the life course.

“We’re proud to have so many WSU faculty recognized by the Washington State Academy of Sciences,” said WSU President Kirk Schulz. “Our faculty are among the best in the world, and they are committed to using their expertise to address some of the most pressing challenges facing the state of Washington today.”

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WSU Insider

Pullman residents call for Black Lives Matter art

A proposal to create some sort of street mural or public art work expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement was referred to the Pullman Arts Commission on Tuesday.

“Let’s be an example for other communities around the nation, and especially to all those students who are thinking of coming to Pullman,” said Jason Kennedy, a seven-year Pullman resident who has taken part in several recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Joe Hedges.
Hedges

Joe Hedges, assistant professor of Fine Arts at Washington State University, said public art projects are often controversial, but they also bring people together to have conversations.

Moreover, Hedges said, public art “can create a sense of community pride — particularly in communities where there may be some people who feel like their voices aren’t being heard.”

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The Lewiston Tribune

Opinion: The Truth About Trump’s Evangelical Support

By Matthew Avery Sutton, professor of history at Washington State University

Matthew Avery Sutton.
Sutton

Donald Trump has never pretended to practice traditional Christian virtues. Yet in 2016 he earned 81 percent of the white evangelical vote—a higher percentage than George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, or John McCain. Trump’s success surprised a lot of us: How could a group of staunchly moral religious voters give their support to a man with a long track record of lying, cheating, using profanity, and grabbing women “by the pussy”?

If this seemed jarring, it may be because evangelical leaders have projected a whitewashed vision of their movement to the rest of the country so successfully for so long. To be an evangelical, leaders of the movement and the scholars who follow them insisted for several decades, is to commit to the authority of the Bible, the centrality of Jesus, the necessity of individual conversion, and evangelism. With this move, they separated evangelicalism from its existence in the world. Evangelicals might try to influence politics and culture, but politics and culture, they implied, had no impact on the untainted core of evangelicalism. Billy Graham might be sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom, and Jerry Falwell might be advising GOP platform committees, but the evangelical gospel was timeless, unaffected by the forces of history and the world around it. The sexists, racists, and xenophobes who regularly appeared in their ranks, they argued, did not reflect the true movement, only its distortions.

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The New Republic

 

Evolutionary Biologists Find Several Fish Adapt in the Same Way to Toxic Water

Several species of fish have adapted to harsh environments using the same mechanism, which brings to question evolutionary chance, according to a study by Kansas State University and Washington State University.

Joanna Kelley.
Joanna Kelley

Joanna Kelley, associate professor in biological sciences and co-lead author at Washington State University; and many additional collaborators recently published an article about repeated adaptations to extreme environments in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Environmental News Network
National Science Foundation
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