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Watching Marmots

Scientists studying marmots in the high meadows of the North Cascades are concerned about their decline

Logan Whiles.
Whiles

Logan Whiles is a graduate research assistant at Washington State University studying predator-prey interactions, and Rawley Davis is his summer field technician. The three of us are about to spend a week in Washington’s North Cascades National Park observing hoary marmots, collecting carnivore scat, and checking on wildlife cameras. This will be Logan Whiles’s fifth time making the roughly sixty-mile trek.

There is evidence that hoary marmots are in serious decline in the North Cascades National Park. One hypothesis for the loss suggests that less snow due to a warming climate opens the restaurant doors for carnivores that otherwise dine at lower elevations (such as coyotes and bobcats). If more marmots are being eaten by these lower elevation animals, then the rare higher elevation carnivores like wolverines and lynx could be forced into competition. This in turn could throw already stressed habitats further out of sync.

Scientists are still determining to what extent human or carnivore activity in the North Cascades affects hoary marmot behavior. They want to know which carnivores up here are eating marmots. Whiles and his team theorized maybe bear (grizzlies are known to dig marmots out of their burrows), but there are currently no grizzlies here, and last season the team collected enough scat to realize that local black bears chomp more veg than they do meat.

Data compiled from this research is giving us a clearer picture of climate change impacts on sensitive mountain habitats across Cascadia.

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Cascadia Magazine

Building a new generation of female leaders in higher ed

Research shows the associate professor rut, where faculty linger at a mid-rank position for years and sometimes indefinitely, is not only very real but also disproportionally affects women, particularly in STEM fields.

The National Science Foundation reports that women comprise only 21 percent of full professors in science fields and 5 percent of full professors in engineering despite earning about half the doctorates in science and engineering in the nation.

Masha Maria Gartstein.
Gartstein

Maria Gartstein was nevertheless able to beat the trend. She is now a full professor in the WSU Department of Psychology and her research on infant development is being featured in an upcoming Netflix documentary.

She said one of the keys to her success was participating in the WSU External Mentor Program, an experience so worthwhile she’s building on its approach with the help of a new $1.2 million NSF grant supporting education leadership development for women in STEM.

The External Mentor Program connects WSU female faculty members with off-campus academic leaders. It was created with support from the NSF in 2008 as part of WSU ADVANCE, an initiative designed to promote institutional transformation, increasing diversity in the highest ranks of STEM at WSU.

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WSU Insider

In World War II, serving Jesus while spying for the United States

Book review by David A. Hollinger, historian at the University of California at Berkeley

Laying the political groundwork for Gen. George Patton’s North African landing of 1942, a top intelligence agent promised local communists that the United States would help them overthrow the government of Spain’s dictator, Francisco Franco. The Americans would even drive the Spanish out of Morocco and thereby facilitate Arab independence. William Eddy, a member of the Office of Strategic Services, America’s first foreign intelligence agency, knew these were lies. Later in life the devout Episcopalian’s conscience troubled him, and he wondered if he, a magnificently effective spy, or anyone in the OSS or later the CIA, could “ever again become a wholly honorable man.”

Matthew Avery Sutton.
Sutton

Eddy is one of four deeply religious American Protestants who are the subjects of Matthew Avery Sutton’s arresting and informative book, “Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War.” All served in the OSS, the World War II predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Sutton. professor and chair of history at WSU, adds to our understanding of the clandestine services by revealing the little-known role of missionaries in these operations.

Sutton skillfully juxtaposes his four stories, revealing the actions of each figure throughout the war and its aftermath. We see Birch dodging bullets in China while Eddy was translating for President Franklin Roosevelt and the Saudi king at a meeting aboard a warship in the Red Sea. “Double Crossed” is a great read and a fresh, archive-intensive contribution to our understanding of American intelligence during World War II.

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The Washington Post

 

First Flood, Then Fright: Community Rallies To Save Eastern Washington Town With Haunting

All over the town of Palouse, Washington, townspeople prep for volunteer roles as ghosts, ghouls and dead children.

This annual Halloween fundraiser started after a devastating 1996 flood damaged the town’s sidewalks and gutted the buildings on Main Street. Haunted Palouse took up the slack after the grants and insurance money ran out.

Twenty-five bucks buys admission to two haunted houses, and a pitch-dark hayride through the woods. Inside the old jail and fire station, black plastic and wooden beams create a labyrinth of dark rooms. And a pig-tailed woman wearing a clown mask acts as the bellhop in an elevator to nowhere.

Robert Franklin.
Franklin

Washington State University instructor of history Robert Franklin has spent a lot of time exploring small struggling towns in the Inland Northwest. “You saw a lot of faded glory and opportunity,” Franklin said.

But, he says, Palouse is different. It’s become a bedroom community for two nearby college towns — homes to WSU in Pullman and the University of Idaho in Moscow. There are shops downtown and a busy restaurant — all of which also make money during Haunted Palouse.

“Palouse is bucking the trend,” Franklin said. “Many of the towns around it, they are becoming more and more marginalized. And many people leave them, or have left them to seek greener pastures elsewhere.”

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OPB.org

What happened to crime under Washington’s legal marijuana?

Here’s the situation: An officer pulls over a driver. They are suspicious that the driver is impaired and they have a DUI on their hands. Specifically, a marijuana DUI.

But proving this is not as simple as breath test, or asking if their names are Cheech, Chong, or Lebowski. Washington state has a 5 nanogram limit, which is determined through a blood test. It’s similar to blowing a .08 on a breath test for alcohol.

Dale Willits.
Willits

“We mostly interviewed law enforcement officers, but we also interviewed prosecutors throughout the state,” said Washington State University Professor Dale Willits. “Some of them, not all of them, but some of them express dismay at the nanogram limit, because now they will go to trial and juries will expect to see this 5 nanogram blood test. But blood tests aren’t ordered for each DUI stop.”

Not only that, there is a time limit to the test. If a driver refuses to take one, then the cops have to wait for a judge to issue a warrant, and then there’s the trip to the hospital for the blood draw. It all takes time, during which the level of marijuana in the driver’s blood can go down. And who knows if it was high enough for a conviction earlier?

This is why there is a looming snafu with Washington’s DUI laws when it comes to marijuana. Willits uncovered the issue during a study for WSU, which largely looked at crime rates under legal marijuana.

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MyNorthwest