Sixteen faculty, six staff, and six graduate students were honored for outstanding achievement at the 2019 College of Arts and Sciences Appreciation and Recognition Social in April.
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Mechthild Tegedar, an international leader in plant biology, and Gary Collins, a pioneer in the study of material defects, received the top two faculty awards. Chuck Cody and Paul Wheeler, both in biological sciences, were honored with the outstanding staff career awards. Graduate students were recognized in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
“In addition to recognizing some amazing individuals, this annual event brings us together to celebrate the diversity and creativity that powers the College of Arts and Sciences,” said Matt Jockers, dean of the college and master of ceremonies for the event.
Outstanding senior in criminal justice and criminology Jordan Sykes will carry the gonfalon for the College of Arts and Sciences during Washington State University graduation ceremonies on Saturday, May 4, in Beasley Coliseum.
The honor of being selected gonfalon bearer recognizes Sykes’s outstanding achievement during his undergraduate career.
In four years at WSU, he maintained a perfect 4.0 grade point average and participated in significant criminology research.
His extensive leadership experience during that time includes serving as president for both the Criminal Justice Club and the Alpha Phi Sigma Criminal Justice Honor Society, as vice president of scholarship for Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, as a judicial board member for the Associated Students of WSU, as vice president of Hillel, the WSU Jewish Students Organization, and as founder and president of the WSU Roller Hockey Club.
“When I arrived at WSU, I made it my mission to make a meaningful impact,” Sykes said. “While I have attempted to accomplish this mission, I feel that, in turn, the University and the Pullman community have had such a profound impact on me that I will be forever indebted to this amazing community.”
Washington State University’s Entrepreneurial Faculty Ambassadors and the Palouse Discovery Science Center’s May Science Pub talk will address water as the essential element to human life and how to better understand how to use water. The talk entitled, “The Language of Water: How it Supports Us and What It’s Telling Us,” will take place from 6-7 p.m., on Tuesday, May 7, at Paradise Creek Brewery in downtown Pullman.
Julie Padowski, assistant director for the Center for Environmental Research, Education, and Outreach (CEREO) at WSU and a clinical assistant professor with the State of Washington Water Research
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Center, and Debbie Lee, WSU Regents professor of English, will help connect the language of water and how it can be heard and interpreted.
“Water has the ability to deeply influence human connection and human storytelling. It has a language that can be heard and interpreted,” Lee said.
Author: Noriko Kawamura, Washington State University
When Japan’s Emperor Akihito abdicates on Tuesday 30 April 2019 the gengo — or era name — of Heisei (‘achieving peace’) under his 1989–2019 reign will come to an end. A new era will begin when his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, ascends the throne on 1 May. The new era will be known as Reiwa (‘beautiful harmony’) as revealed by the Abe Cabinet to an eagerly awaiting Japanese public on 1 April.
The Japanese media has recognised the widening gap between Emperor Akihito, who embraces the pacifist course, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is implementing a more assertive foreign policy — including establishing Japan’s first-ever National Security Council and National Security Strategy. The Abe government also reinterpreted the Article 9 ‘peace clause’ of the Constitution to permit Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) the right to engage in limited forms of collective self-defence.
When Crown Prince Naruhito ascends the throne, many expect him to follow his father as a champion of pacifism, civil liberties and the welfare of the people. But as the Abe government continues to pursue constitutional revision to recognise the SDF, the new Emperor may be standing at a crossroads. Given the constitutional limitations on Japanese Emperors it is hard to tell what Naruhito can or will do, but compared with his father’s mild manner and humility, the Oxford-educated Naruhito is known to be more individualistic, independent and outspoken.
Besides the issue of abdication, the Imperial Household Law may be long overdue for amendment on the question of succession. The law stipulates that the Chrysanthemum Throne must be succeeded by a male, but Crown Prince Naruhito only has a daughter, Princess Aiko. In the age of increasing gender equality the law seems anachronistic to most liberals, but the conservative Abe Cabinet does not seem interested in amending it. Will the new Emperor and his Western-educated wife, Masako, be content with accepting the old tradition?
In contrast to its moniker of ‘beautiful harmony’, the Reiwa era may begin with some less than harmonious dialogue between the Imperial House and the Abe cabinet.
Washington State University researchers have found a variety of diseases and other health problems in the second- and third-generation offspring of rats exposed to glyphosate, the world’s most popular weed killer. In the first study of its kind, the researchers saw descendants of exposed rats developing prostate, kidney and ovarian diseases, obesity and birth abnormalities.
Michael Skinner, a WSU professor of biological sciences, and his colleagues exposed pregnant rats to the herbicide between their eighth and 14th days of gestation. The dose—half the amount expected to show no adverse effect—produced no apparent ill effects on either the parents or the first generation of offspring.
But writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers say they saw “dramatic increases” in several pathologies affecting the second and third generations.
In third-generation males, the researchers saw a 30 percent increase in prostate disease—three times that of a control population. The third generation of females had a 40 percent increase in kidney disease, or four times that of the controls.
More than one-third of the second-generation mothers had unsuccessful pregnancies, with most of those affected dying. Two out of five males and females in the third generation were obese.
“The ability of glyphosate and other environmental toxicants to impact our future generations needs to be considered,” they write, “and is potentially as important as the direct exposure toxicology done today for risk assessment.”
