CAS in the Media | Washington State University

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A Guided Stroll Through the Past

July 29, 2019 adriana

Beginning this summer, walk in the present while seeing some of Vancouver, Washington’s oldest historic sites with Now iTour, a self-guided, voice-activated virtual tour through the world’s first head-mounted tablet.

When RealWear, a San Jose–based knowledge transfer company, moved into the Artillery Barracks of Vancouver, they essentially became a part of The Historic Trust. With both organizations interested in bringing the local community together, a simple conversation birthed the grand idea of melding together the technology of RealWear, the history of Vancouver, Wash., and the talented students of WSU Vancouver’s Creative Media and Digital Culture program.

Since fall 2017, Richard Burrows, director of community outreach and engagement at The Historic Trust, has worked with CMDC Director and Professor Dene Grigar’s students to develop three technology-based projects to provide engaging, interactive opportunities to experience the history of Vancouver in new ways. Each has been the focus of a senior seminar class, the last class taken before a CMDC senior graduates.

The first project was the Providence Academy Journey, an augmented reality experience, and the second, Unfolding Vancouver, an interactive game for tablets and smartphones. The graduating class of December 2018 developed Now iTour, an interactive tour given through a headset considered the world’s first head-mounted tablet, or the RealWear HMT-1. The company provided 10 headsets to The Historic Trust for the students to develop the application and for the Trust to give the tours.

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Northwest Crimson & Gray

Who dominates the discourse of the past?

July 29, 2019 adriana

Male academics, who comprise less than 10 percent of North American archaeologists, write the vast majority of the field’s high impact, peer-reviewed literature.

Shannon Tushingham and Tiffany Fulkerson smile over a stack of books and in front of ancient artifacts. — Tushingham and Fulkerson

That’s according to a new study in American Antiquity by Washington State University archaeologists Tiffany Fulkerson and Shannon Tushingham.

The two scientists set out to determine how a rapidly evolving demographic and professional landscape is influencing the production and dissemination of knowledge in American archaeology.

They found that women, who now make up half of all archaeologists in North America, and professionals working outside of a university setting, who account for 90 percent of the total workforce, were far less likely to publish in peer-reviewed journals.

“The underrepresentation of women and non-academics in peer-reviewed publications is in stark contrast to the landscape of archaeology as a whole, which is rich in gender and occupational diversity,” said Fulkerson, a graduate student in the WSU Department of Anthropology and lead author of the study. “In effect, you have a very narrow demographic dominating the discourse of the past in North America.”

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WSU Insider

WSU grad’s art brought Apollo‑era space flight to millions

July 26, 2019 adriana

Before an age of digital cameras, the world had to rely largely on artist renderings to help visualize the various stages of early space travel, particularly the pioneering Apollo 11 mission that took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon 50 years ago this month.

And the artist whose work NASA relied on heavily was WSU alumnus George Mathis.

Rendering of a rocket ship and capsule in orbit around a planet inouter space by artist and WSU alumnus George Mathis. — Rendering by artist and WSU alumnus George Mathis.

Mathis graduated from WSU with a degree in art in 1932 and moved to Oakland, California, to focus on becoming a commercial artist. Along with his wife Jean, he founded a thriving business in lithography, where he focused on capturing the Old West through his art.

But in 1959, he also started working with the Aerojet corporation, America’s largest producer of rocket engines. Aerojet built the engines for the Apollo and Gemini missions and used the artistic renderings by Mathis to illustrate how the propulsion systems were designed to work. He called the art, “engineering concept” renderings and worked closely with Aerojet’s engineers, who studied the images for technical accuracy.

Back in 1969, with international interest in the Apollo 11 mission soaring, the Mathis renderings were widely broadcast by television networks and published in newspapers and magazines to help explain how the astronauts were actually getting from Earth to the moon.

He worked with Aerojet until 1970. Over the course of his career, he became nationally recognized not only for his work depicting space travel but for his art celebrating scenes of the Old West and the California Gold Rush, earning him the affectionate title of “pictoral historian of the Mother Lode.”

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WSU Insider

Four CAS faculty among 8 at WSU elected to Washington State Academy of Sciences

July 19, 2019 adriana

Eight Washington State University faculty members—including four in the College of Arts and Sciences—were elected to membership in the Washington State Academy of Sciences, an organization that advances science in the state and informs public policy.

The new members come from WSU campuses across the state and represent a range of scientific specialties. They’ll be officially inducted in September, in a ceremony at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

The WSU scientists who were elected by their peers include:

Christopher Keane
Vice President for Research at WSU
Professor of physics

Julie Kmec
Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts
Department of Sociology

Maureen Schmitter‑Edgecombe
Professor
Department of Psychology

Michael Skinner
Eastlick Distinguished Professor in Health Sciences
School of Biological Sciences

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WSU Insider

Dr. Universe: How does the moon glow?

July 8, 2019 adriana

Our moon is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. But unlike a lamp or our sun, the moon doesn’t produce its own light.

Light can travel in lots of different ways. Moonlight is actually sunlight that shines on the moon and bounces off. The light reflects off old volcanoes, craters, and lava flows on the moon’s surface.

That’s what I found out from my friend Julie Menard, a geologist and researcher in the School of the Environment at Washington State University, who studies what makes up the rocky planets in our solar system.

If you look through binoculars or a telescope, you might even be able to see some lunar rays coming out of the moon’s craters, she said. These craters are places where asteroids or meteorites hit the moon long ago. The rays are formed by rocks and dust and other stuff that got blown out of the crater by a meteorite. You might also see some lighter, brighter spots on the moon, which are signs of newer impacts.

Menard also reminded me about a common object a lot of us use: mirrors. She said that during the Apollo missions, astronauts actually left behind some mirrors on the surface of the moon.

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Dr. Universe