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Emergency medicine expert connects climate change, human health

One of the world’s leading experts in wilderness and emergency medicine will talk about the intersection of climate change and human health in the 2019 Lane Family Lecture in Environmental Science, 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20, in the Elson S. Floyd Cultural Center on the WSU Pullman campus.

Paul Auerbach.
Auerbach

Dr. Paul Auerbach, a physician, author and professor of medicine, will present “Climate Change and Human Health — There Are No Boundaries.” Preceding the lecture at 4 p.m. will be a reception.

The event is free and open to the public.

“Climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time,” said WSU environmental science instructor Kara Whitman. “Virtually everyone will be directly or indirectly impacted by it. In his lecture, Dr. Auerbach will provide the WSU community with a hard look at the real human health consequences of our quickly changing climate.”

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WSU Insider

Americans Were A Lot Less Worried About Climate Change Before Trump Took Office

Polls show more Americans are concerned about climate change than they used to be. That much is evident in surveys done by researchers at Yale University and George Mason University. For instance, in March of 2015, 63 percent of Americans believed climate change was happening and 52 percent reported being worried about it. By December of 2018, belief had jumped to 73 percent — and 69 percent were worried.

Erik Johnson.
Johnson

In that shift, Erik Johnson sees the hand of politics. Johnson is a professor of sociology at Washington State University, where he studies environmental movements. A few years ago, he got interested in the question of whether support for environmental policy might go up as Gen Xers and millennials began to take over from older generations. Basically: When old people die, is it good for environmental policy support?

But that turned out to be the wrong question entirely. “As we got into it, we started to figure out that age cohorts don’t matter,” Johnson told me. Instead, the stats said that shifts in support for environmental spending — whether people believed it should go up or down — were more strongly correlated with things like politics and economics.

Last month, Johnson published research that tracked American support for environmental spending over time. Since 1973, public support for increased environmental spending has tended to grow during Republican administrations and decline during Democratic ones. Which means Americans are more likely to want the government to take more environmental action when the person in the White House is less likely to have environmentalism as a core focus of his policy.

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FiveThirtyEight

Mock Trial team powered by real courtroom experience

From the probing plaintiff’s attorney to the deft defense counsel, students in Mock Trial at Washington State University Pullman play a variety of roles and gain valuable experience in preparing for careers in law.

Adding powerful authenticity to their experience, this year’s Mock Trial team recently got the rare opportunity to practice their skills in an authentic courtroom and to meet with real-life judges, lawyers and other legal professionals where they work.

Aman McLeod.
McLeod

A generous gift from WSU alumnus Judge John Rossmeissl, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Washington’s Eastern District, made it possible for 22 students in Aman McLeod’s “Political Science Issues” class to travel to Yakima to participate in two practice trials and to learn first-hand about courthouse operations and procedures.

“Little is as effective in learning to practice law as actual practice, and what better place to get such practice than an actual courtroom,” said McLeod, faculty instructor for the team.

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WSU Insider

Study: Officer Fatigue Raises Likelihood of Citizen Complaints

Fatigue and sleepiness on the job significantly raise the odds of officers drawing citizen complaints during their shift, according to a newly published study by a team of sleep specialists.

Their first-of-its-kind analysis finds that public complaints are roughly seven times more likely to occur on shifts with a traditionally high probability of officer tiredness—primarily, night shifts.

Samantha Riedy.
Riedy

The study was led by Samantha Riedy, a PhD candidate in experimental psychology and a graduate research assistant at the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University (WSU). Joining her were Dr. Drew Dawson, a prominent sleep investigator with Central Queensland University in Australia, and WSU’s Dr. Bryan Vila, the foremost authority on the impact of sleep deprivation on police performance whose dataset from his classic “Tired Cops” research was used in this study.

“This [pattern] is not surprising,” Riedy writes, “given that night shift work is associated with greater fatigue; daytime sleep between night shifts tends to be reduced and less restorative than nighttime sleep; and off-duty court hours further restrict sleep between consecutive night shifts.”

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Law Officer Magazine

Live radio drama features love stories for Valentine’s Day

John Barber.
Barber

“Affairs of the Heart with Lonesome Gal,” a live radio drama directed by John Barber, professor in the Creative Media and Digital Culture program at Washington State University Vancouver, will be performed at the Kiggins Theatre in downtown Vancouver on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. Featuring local voice actors and sound artists, the show will be performed once only. Doors open at 6 p.m. The performance begins at 7 p.m.

“Affairs of the Heart” will sample five romantic radio dramas from the 1940s through the 1960s. The performance is part of Re‑Imagined Radio, a series led by Barber that presents live performances of new and classic radio dramas.

“Beyond entertainment, our live performance is both an exploration of how the original radio drama might have been produced, and an effort to promote civic engagement through community art and performances,” Barber said.

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WSU Insider