will.ferguson | CAS in the Media | Washington State University

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Salmon face double whammy from toxic stormwater

February 20, 2018 will.ferguson

Washington State University researchers have found that salmon face a double whammy when they swim in the stormwater runoff of urban roadways.

First, as scientists learned a couple years ago, toxic pollution in the water can kill them. WSU researchers have now determined that fish that survive polluted stormwater are still at risk.

“We’re showing that even if the fish are surviving the stormwater exposure, they still might not be able to detect the world around them as well, which can make it harder for them to find food or more likely for them to get eaten,” said Allison Coffin, an assistant professor of neuroscience at WSU Vancouver.

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Science Daily

At Columbia River’s doorstep, an uneasy lookout for invasive mussels

February 20, 2018 will.ferguson

It’s been 30 years since mussels were first detected in Michigan; today, some parts of Lake Erie are covered with 70,000 mussels per square meter. That kind of mass can cripple large industrial systems, said Professor Steve Bollens, an ecologist at Washington State University Vancouver.

“The threat to hydropower infrastructure is huge,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “All of the pipes and pumps of infrastructure would be subject to fouling by these encrusting mussels.”

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Oregonlive.com

Laser experiment hints at weird in-between ice

February 6, 2018 will.ferguson

A proposed form of ice acts like a cross between a solid and a liquid. Now, a new study strengthens the case that the weird state of matter really exists.

Hints of the special phase, called superionic ice, appeared in water ice exposed to high pressures and temperatures, researchers report February 5 in Nature Physics. Although such unusual ice isn’t found naturally on Earth, it might lurk deep inside frozen worlds like Uranus and Neptune.

“It’s definitely providing more insight into water at these conditions,” says physicist Marcus Knudson of Washington State University in Pullman.

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Science News

Tech red unmasked

January 30, 2018 will.ferguson

Tech red, an enigmatic technetium compound that has resisted characterization for half a century, has been identified using chemical detective-work and computer modelling. The molecule’s unusual chemistry may explain why it has proven so difficult to unmask.

‘There are only a handful of laboratories who can work with large amounts of technetium, and even fewer who have access to anything other than simple characterization techniques,’ explains John McCloy, who investigates radioactive materials at Washington State University.

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Chemistry World

Fish influence mountain ranges

January 30, 2018 will.ferguson

When asked if he would like water in his whisky W.C Fields famously remarked that he didn’t drink water because fish procreate in it (his actual words were somewhat racier). Migratory salmon do so in their millions with a great deal of energy, specifically in the gravel beds of high-energy streams.

As well as discouraging bibulous old men from diluting their liquor, it occurred to Alexander Fremier of Washington State University and other American colleagues that here was a noteworthy example of an active part of the biosphere physically intervening in the rock cycle. Not that it comes even close to what humans have become capable of since the Industrial Revolution, but it might be an object lesson in the fragility of what are otherwise the robust processes of erosion.

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Earth-pages