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CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

Two CAS projects among 6 to receive funding during inaugural Cougar Cage event

Realistic 3D printed heart components and a tool that can rapidly grow cancer-fighting T cells are among the projects being supported by a group of passionate Washington State University graduates.

While initially agreeing to fund at least half of the projects, the Palouse Club members opted to support all six projects presented to them during Cougar Cage last month. Their total support for the first round of projects totals nearly $300,000.

Fighting hearing loss:

WSU Vancouver’s Allison Coffin and John Harkness will use machine learning to develop a predictive tool to combat drug-induced hearing loss. The approach is similar to processes used to predict drug toxicity for other organs like the heart and liver.

Bear research to benefit humans:

Joanna Kelley.
Kelley

Joanna Kelley, an associate professor within the School of Biological Sciences, is working to advance researchers’ understanding of obesity and its metabolic complications by looking to bears. Specifically, Kelley will study hibernating grizzly bears to better understand their naturally reversible obesity and insulin resistance and how it might apply to humans.

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WSU Insider

WSU jazz concert features tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Alison Poteracke.
Poteracke

The Washington State University School of Music will present the online concert “A Virtual Celebration of Jazz” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 20.

The Jazz Big Band will present the premiere of “RBG,” a tribute to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, composed by recent WSU master’s graduate Alison Poteracke, and “Conspiracy Theory” by Greg Yasinitsky, WSU coordinator of Jazz Studies, along with other works by students and faculty.

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Lewiston Tribune

15 CAS undergraduates win 10 SURCA research awards

More than a quarter of Washington State University students who delivered virtual presentations won monetary awards at the annual Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (SURCA) on March 29 in Pullman.

SURCA is the unique WSU-wide venue for students from all majors, years in college, and from all WSU campuses. Nearly 150 students from the Pullman, Vancouver, Spokane, and Global campuses delivered presentations detailing their research, scholarship, and creative activities conducted with a mentor.

Faculty, postdoctoral students, and community experts used a common rubric to judge and score all presentations in nine SURCA categories that are designed to cover all disciplines at the university.

Fifteen CAS students won 10 different awards across seven categories at the 2021 event held online.

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WSU Insider

Scientists Create Crystal Stronger Than Diamond

Currently, diamond is regarded to be one of the hardest and most scratch-resistant natural materials in the world. Most diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry display a cubic crystal structure, a repeating pattern of 8 atoms forming a cube with carbon atoms at its vertices. Each carbon atom forms four bonds with its neighbors, explaining the overall stability and hardness of the crystal structure.

Now scientists at Washington State University’s Institute for Shock Physics created hexagonal diamonds large enough to measure their stiffness and also calculated their hardness. The results of their experiments are published in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.

Yogendra Gupta.
Gupta

“Diamond is a very unique material,” said Yogendra Gupta, director of the Institute for Shock Physics and corresponding author on the study. “It is not only the strongest—it has beautiful optical properties and a very high thermal conductivity. Now we have made the hexagonal form of diamond, produced under shock compression experiments, that is significantly stiffer and stronger than regular gem diamonds.”

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Forbes
WSU Insider
News Beezer
Live Science

A pandemic’s new norms

Sociologists at Washington State University found both liberal and conservatives in the United States disapprove of individuals putting the health of their community at risk, but conservatives cared more about why those individuals were taking the risks in the first place.

Christine Horne.
Horne
Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson.
Kirkpatrick Johnson

Sociology professors Christine Horne and Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson asked Americans across the country whether they approved of actions like wearing a mask or stockpiling necessities.

“The more harm there was, the more disapproval there was,” Johnson says. “People were more disapproving of social gatherings than they were about doing a job.”

Johnson and Horne randomly assigned half of their respondents to read a scenario where an individual was putting their own health at risk, and the other half read about someone who was putting the health of the community at risk. They then asked the respondents whether people would disapprove of the behavior in the story and how much they thought liberals and conservatives would disagree.

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Washington State Magazine