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The Moon May Have Cradled Life Four Billion Years Ago, Research Shows

The Moon’s landscape has remained dead for billions of years. At least that’s the traditional scientific dogma on lunar life. But a recent study could upend centuries of scientific understanding about life on the Moon.

According to the researchers, conditions on the Moon’s surface could have supported simple lifeforms when the Moon was just a freshly formed celestial body four billion years ago, and when its volcanoes peaked in volcanic activity 3.5 billion years ago.

Dirk Schulze-Makuch.
Schulze-Makuch

Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University, is the author of the study. According to him, the Moon was ejecting large quantities of superheated volatile gases, including water vapor from its interior that could have created an atmosphere and the presence of liquid water.

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Esquire

Despite glacier loss, meltwater species find a way to persist, UM study finds

Glaciers are retreating in Glacier National Park and across the globe due to climate change, though a special community of cold water invertebrates have persisted in areas of Montana, a new study shows.

Scott Hotaling.
Hotaling

A team of researchers, including Scott Hotaling, a postdoctoral research associate in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University, identified a specialized cold-water invertebrate community, which includes the Endangered Species Act-protected meltwater stonefly, living in the highest elevation streams fed not only by melting glaciers but also by snowfields and groundwater springs.

The researchers note that climate change impacts on mountain biodiversity are complex and uncertain. They emphasize the urgent need to assess the widespread impacts of climate-induced glacier loss in high-elevation mountain ecosystems.

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Missoula Current

Popular Science

Science News for Students

WSU announces winner of Oaks Academic Technology Award

Willam Schlosser.
Schlosser

William “Dr. Bill” Schlosser, a faculty member at Washington State University’s School of the Environment, is the winner of the 2020 Oaks Academic Technology Award. The annual award is sponsored by Academic Outreach & Innovation (AOI).

The Oaks award, named in honor of visionary innovator Dr. Muriel Oaks, WSU Dean Emeritus, recognizes a faculty member’s innovative application of an existing technology to transform teaching and learning in their classroom.

Schlosser is being awarded in recognition of his innovative use of multiple software tools to give students a platform to effectively complete environmental research activities and present their findings following the system-wide transition to distance learning in Spring 2020. He will receive $3000 in faculty development funds and a trophy in recognition of his achievement.

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WSU Insider

What Elite Museums Can Teach Us About Running a Creative Business

Balancing between the creative imperative and the bottom line is an art perfected by top museums like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Picture yourself in a museum of modern art. On the walls of the gallery are two Picasso paintings, “Dish of Pears” and “Seated Nude,” alongside other paintings by European artists active in the early 20th century. Step into a room nearby and there is another Picasso, “The Three Dancers,” among a selection of masterpieces by international Surrealists. Elsewhere in the museum, in another curated show, you find again the unmistakable hand of Picasso in “Weeping Woman.”

Anna Zamora-Kapoor.
Zamora-Kapoor

In “Networks on the walls: Analysing ‘traces’ of institutional logics in museums’ permanent exhibitions,” Anna Zamora-Kapoor, assistant professor of sociology at Washington State University, and colleagues unravel the question by analysing artist selection and the underlying networks among artworks in the permanent collections of three top museums of modern and contemporary art: Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou in Paris and MoMA. They show that elite museums’ selection of artists and the way in which they display the latter’s works are subject to forces of state, market, and aesthetics as well as to the compromises these often conflicting forces engender – dynamics similar to what businesses in the creative and innovative industries face.

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Knowledge

Introducing students to the Palouse

Every year students from across Washington and around the world come to study at Washington State University. But during their time here, how much do they really get to know the beauty, history, and unique landscapes of their Palouse home?

An interdisciplinary WSU team, including faculty from Earth sciences and history, has received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to develop a series of courses for students to dig deeply into Palouse history and culture. They hope the program will give students a greater understanding of the unique region while also helping them to grow strong roots — building understanding of what it means to be an active citizen and to be part of a community wherever they end up. The project is one of 224 education grants for curriculum innovation in the humanities awarded by NEH.

The Palouse Matters program will consist of humanities-oriented, interdisciplinary classes that focus on the Palouse and its landscapes. The courses, which will include “Landscapes of the Palouse,” “Digital Palouse,” and “Reading the American Landscape,” will combine content and methods from environmental history, design, ecology, cultural landscape studies, and place-based education, enabling students to make connections among seemingly incongruous subjects and diverse populations.

With the one-year planning grant, the researchers hope to begin offering the courses as part of a new, general education humanities pathway in fall of 2021.

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WSU Insider