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A dose of fact

The history of cannabis is full of myths and hype, and that’s never been more true than the present moment as medical science tries to catch up with capitalism.

Rebecca Craft.
Rebecca Craft

Medical marijuana is now legal in 22 states, while recreational use is legal in 11. A tide of claims about the plant’s healing powers has accompanied its rise in acceptance. If you believed the pervasive advertising, you might think THC and CBD are miracle cure-alls for anything that ails you.

The truth is, there are very few scientific studies to substantiate claims at this time, said Rebecca Craft, one of dozens of researchers at Washington State University studying cannabis.

On Tuesday, Craft will share what is known in the talk “Marijuana: Evil Weed or Medical Miracle” at Basalt Cellars in Clarkston as part of the Wine and Wisdom series organized by the Asotin County Library.

Because of cannabis’ federally regulated status, it has been difficult for scientists to do controlled testing on humans, Craft said. Instead, most of the testing has been done on animals and extrapolated to humans.

“Unfortunately, right now the list of what we don’t know is considerably longer than the list of what we do know,” said Craft, who has spoken around the state as part of Humanities Washington programs. In a preview to Tuesday’s discussion, the professor shared some facts with Inland 360.

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Lewiston Tribune

A new gravitational wave observatory in India could challenge what we know about physics

The frontier of human knowledge can be measured in collisions. With the right instruments, you can hear their echoes, from billions of years ago, many light years away.

Sukanta Bose.
Sukanta Bose

Physicists and astronomers are slowly listening to the stories inside these echoes, known as “gravitational waves,” in hopes of learning more about the birth of the universe and the nature of our reality. One of these researchers is Washington State University physics professor Sukanta Bose, who is helping to develop a new gravitational wave observatory center in India through a U.S. partnership. He is tasked with further developing the country’s scientific community by using astronomical research with the help of LIGO facilities (or Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory).

LIGO began as a joint project between MIT and Caltech, funded by the National Science Foundation, but has since grown into the international LIGO Science Collaboration. Its two facilities are located in Hanford, Washington, about three hours southwest of Spokane, and in Livingston Parish, Louisiana. The new project, expected to be complete in 2024, is another node in an ongoing network of gravitational wave detectors around the world.

“Unlike optical observatories, we don’t care about the quality of the night sky,” Bose tells the Inlander from India. “The sites that we choose can have cloud cover.” Instead, the detectors rely on sound, or rather, vibrations, he says.

When two major astral bodies collide, they cause ripples in the fabric of space-time, a model of our universe that combines the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time. Albert Einstein predicted these rippling waves in his theory on general relativity in 1915, and in the last few years astronomers have been able to detect them.

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The Inlander

Balancing Act: Women’s voices are largely missing from newspaper letters to the editor

A majority of letters to the editor that appear in newspapers are written by men, which means a sizable chunk of the nation isn’t taking part in the national conversation.

Joyce Ehrlinger.
Joyce Ehrlinger

Joyce Ehrlinger, assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, said that women are hesitant to position themselves as experts.

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Bristol Herald Courier

Shining a light on North America’s first electron microscope

In its day, a five-foot-tall golden microscope on the Washington State University campus was the most powerful imaging device on the continent. Despite its scientific significance, it has been largely lost from the pages of history.

Michael Knoblauch, biological sciences
Knoblauch

Michael Knoblauch, a biology professor at Washington State University, wants to fix this.

“Europe’s first electron microscope earned its inventors a Nobel prize and is on display at the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest museum of science and technology, while nobody really knows about our instrument.” said Knoblauch, who is also the director of WSU’s Franceschi Microscopy and Imaging Center. “Something of this significance should be in the Smithsonian.” » More …

Restoring a musical relic

College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Thomas LeClair is trying to fix a 91-year-old theatre organ he found languishing in the basement of Webster Physical Sciences building on the Pullman campus.

thomas-leclair-sits-among-the-many-pipes-of-the-old-organ-in-the-basement-of-webster-hall
Thomas LeClair works on the old pipe organ.

A biology and music double-degree student, LeClair discovered the existence of the instrument while thumbing through old files in the WSU Libraries Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections.

“I was looking up information about the organ I practice on in Bryan Hall, and came across a couple of papers about a different and much older organ in Webster,” LeClair said. “I was like, ‘What? That’s the physics building, they don’t have an organ.’ So, I went to the office in Webster and asked about it, and they told me that, yes, they do in fact have an old theatre organ in the basement.”

In 1927, early Pullman developer P.W. Struppler purchased the organ now in Webster to accompany silent movies at the Spanish Colonial style Cordova Theatre, which opened on Grand Avenue in 1928.

The old pipe organ was donated to WSU in 1961 and installed in the physical sciences building in 1975 at the behest of then-chairman of physics Edward Donaldson for studying musical acoustics.

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WSU Insider