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A healthy sense of disgust can prevent sickness

You might want to pay attention to those bad, queasy feelings. New research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Feb. 15, suggests that disgust could be the body’s way of helping humans avoid infection.

Aaron Blackwell.
Blackwell

“We found that people with higher levels of disgust had lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers that were indicative of having bacterial or viral infections,” said Aaron Blackwell, a Washington State University associate professor of anthropology and co-author on the paper. “While the study shows that disgust functions to protect against infection, it also showed it varies across different environments, based on how easily people can avoid certain things.”

This study supports the hypothesis that disgust is an evolved human emotion that functions as a disease-avoidance mechanism, helping humans to reduce their exposure to pathogens. The findings also demonstrate that the human disgust response is calibrated to the local costs and benefits of avoidance and infection.

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WSU Insider
Yahoo! News
AJC
Feeling Fit
The Star
Whatsnew2day

Reconstruction-era amendment could bar Trump from future public office, historian Eric Foner says in WSU lecture

Constitutional changes following the American Civil War could be used to bar President Donald Trump from seeking future office, historian Eric Foner said in a virtual lecture hosted by Washington State University on Tuesday.

“Key questions facing American society right now are Reconstruction questions,” said Foner, the first to give a series of lectures about the state of American democracy as part of a distinguished speaker series hosted by the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at WSU that will continue into next month.

Cornell Clayton.
Clayton

The historical insight provided by Foner, who has published several books on 19th century American politics including 2010’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” is the goal of the speaker series, said Cornell Clayton, director of the Foley Institute.

“It’s a really opportune time to take a step back and look at what’s happening more broadly, whether or not we’re at a turning point,” Clayton said.

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The Spokesman-Review

Marijuana and mental health: Examining a complicated relationship

As restrictions on marijuana use fall and its popularity around the world rises, researchers and therapists are examining its influence on mental health. Some medical experts say cannabis has a negative effect on the psychological well-being of chronic users, though it’s unclear whether it exacerbates existing issues or creates new ones.

Carrie Cuttler.
Cuttler

Carrie Cuttler, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, researches how cannabis helps those with PTSD. Her September study in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that marijuana reduced repetitive thoughts about a traumatic event by 62%, flashbacks by 51%, anxiety by 57% and irritability by 67%.

“What we generally find across the board for depression, anxiety, stress, OCD symptoms, PTSD symptoms, is approximately 50% reductions in the severity of of these symptoms from immediately before, to immediately after cannabis use,” Cuttler said.

The main reason medical marijuana patients use the plant, she said, is for pain, followed by anxiety and depression.

“Cannabis is serving as a bit of a Band-Aid, in that what it’s doing is temporarily masking these mental health symptoms, but it’s not doing anything to address the root core issue that is maintaining those symptoms over time,” Cuttler said.

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MSN

Re: Building Democracy explores ways to mend our political, social, and cultural divides

In this episode of the Re: Building Democracy series, we head over the pass again to central and eastern Washington to hear more about the ways Washingtonians are bridging civic, class, and cultural divides.

Jennifer Sherman.
Sherman

You’ll hear from Washington State University Professor Jennifer Sherman on class blindness and the myth of the classless society. She’s the author of Dividing Paradise: Rural Inequality and the Diminishing American Dream.

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KUOW

The Dogs That Grew Wool and the People Who Love Them

Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest bred little, fluffy white dogs that provided for them, both materially and spiritually.

Matthew Marino.
Marino

Dogs were so important to Indigenous people on the coast that the canines were sometimes buried in association with humans—a practice not extended to other animals. Washington State University alumnus Matthew Marino analyzed numerous such burials and concluded that some dogs operated as persons in the Coast Salish world, a conclusion that echoes Indigenous elders.

As persons and ancestors, dogs were entitled to a better life than other animals. And since wool dogs provided wealth via their fur, they were accordingly well fed and treated kindly. The dog bones that Marino examined showed little damage, although some puppies may have been sacrificed to accompany the burial of a child; one adult dog had a healed broken vertebra, indicating it had been cared for long enough to recover from an injury. The wool dogs, in particular, ate well.

There is no doubt wool dogs underpinned a robust weaving industry on the coast, an activity noted in archaeological digs. For instance, excavations in the 1970s at the Makah village of Ozette on the westernmost point of today’s Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, uncovered wooden looms, spinning whorls, combs, and beaters, as well as miniature looms for training children. A landslide—probably caused by an earthquake on January 26, 1700—had destroyed the village and buried several cedar longhouses beneath a three-meter wall of mud.

Dale Croes.
Croes

The disaster preserved numerous belongings of the people—kin to the Nuu-chah-nulth—including one blanket containing dog fur that was largely intact, as it was stored in a cedar wood box. They were very productive weavers. “They built 25-foot [7.5-meter] longhouses of cedar,” says Dale Croes, an archaeologist at Washington State University, who helped on the excavation. “They could easily fit three to four looms inside. We calculated they could have easily had nine weavers per household. It was an absolute industry.”

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Hakai Magazine