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Measuring America’s Health

The second annual Healthiest Communities rankings, compiled in collaboration with the Aetna Foundation, offer insight into how dozens of factors come together to shape health across the country. By providing a diagnostic scan of the nation, Healthiest Communities aims to draw a clear link between where people live and how well they live—and for how long.

Justin Denney.“There’s something about the places where we spend time that influence our health and well-being,” says Justin Denney, an associate professor of sociology and a health disparities researcher at Washington State University. “Is there access to safe housing, opportunities for employment or to get fresh foods—or are you bound by convenience stores that are around?”

Like many of the top counties in the Healthiest Communities rankings, Douglas County, Colorado, is well-educated and wealthy, with a median household income of about $111,000 in recent years.

Many of America’s poorest counties, meanwhile, fall far outside the rankings, underscoring the crucial need for cross-sector partnerships that promote health equity and ensure wealth is not the only path to wellness.

“We absolutely should be trying to improve resources available to all kinds of families in all kinds of places,” Denney says.

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US News & World Report

Researcher discusses importance of data for missing, murdered Native women

Annita Lucchesi.Murders and disappearances of Native American women have risen to prominence lately, inspiring protests and vigils around Montana and legislation in both Helena and Washington, D.C.

There’s broad consensus that improving data access is vital to helping law enforcement solve cold cases. Existing studies have shown Native women face far higher rates of violence than their non-Native counterparts, a problem that’s been variously attributed to racism, insufficient resources, jurisdictional gaps between law enforcement agencies, and other factors. But as Annita Lucchesi began researching this issue while a master’s student in American Studies at Washington State University, she found the underlying data lacking..

“The more I looked, the messier it got,” the Southern Cheyenne researcher told an audience in Polson on Monday, describing how the MMIW Database came to be. This database now logs thousands of cases of murdered and missing indigenous people throughout the Americas, and she sees a variety of ways it could stem this trend.

While databases exist, she said, “they all collect different kinds of things and so if you’re trying to make sense of this issue, you’re going to look at 50 different places (and) the more confused you’re going to get.”

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Billings Gazette

WSU Tri‑Cities professor honored with regional excellence in teaching award

A curiosity for the world and the yearning to know how it works.

Allan Felsot.
Felsot

It is what brought Allan Felsot to the world of science and it is what inspired in him an interest and passion for teaching and academia at the college level. He brings this passion to his students, which is what has led to Felsot earning a regional teaching award.

Felsot, the academic director for the math and science sector of the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington State University Tri-Cities and professor of entomology, was recently announced as the recipient of the Pacific branch of the Entomological Society of America’s award for excellence in teaching.

The award honors educators at the university or community college level who have excelled through innovations in developing new courses, programs and teaching methods in the field of entomology and the sciences.

“If you were to ask me to name an instructor that has had one of the greatest impacts in my entire academic a career, I would answer Dr. Allan S. Felsot,” said alumna Yessica Carnley. “The dedication and commitment that he has to his students and to the proliferation of knowledge is one that is rarely encountered. One of the greatest lessons I learned in his courses was to question everything and to answer your own questions through proper research and testing, if possible.”

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WSU Insider

Precrastination: When the Early Bird Gets the Shaft

The term “precrastination” is defined as the tendency to tackle subgoals at the earliest opportunity — even at the expense of extra effort.

Lisa Fournier.
Fournier

In a study from 2018, led by Lisa Fournier, a professor of psychology at Washington State University, subjects were tasked with retrieving two buckets of balls. One was 6 to 12 feet in front of them, and the other was another 6 to 10 feet farther. Eighty percent of the subjects picked up the first bucket, carried it with them all the way to the second one, and then carried both back to the starting point.

“We tend to start with the task that can be done as soon as possible,” Dr. Fournier said.

Indeed, the longer your to-do list is, the likelier you are to precrastinate. To drive this point home, Dr. Fournier and her co-authors had some of the study participants increase their mental load by asking them to memorize a list of numbers that they would have to recall after retrieving the balls. The result: The percentage of precrastinators went up to 90.

What’s so hard about not jumping the gun?

One explanation is evolution. If you don’t grab the low-hanging fruit now, it might not be there later. You could run out of time to complete a task, or forget about it altogether. Carpe diem, right?

“I actually interrupt people a lot because otherwise I’m afraid I won’t remember what I was going to say,” Dr. Fournier said.

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New York Times

Dr. Universe: How many different types of plankton are there? Are there freshwater plankton?

We can find millions and millions of plankton in bodies of water all over the world—from oceans, rivers, and lakes to ponds and mud puddles.

That’s what I found out from my friend Julie Zimmerman, a biologist with the Aquatic Ecology Lab at Washington State University. In the lab, researchers can use powerful microscopes to get an up-close look at these tiny creatures.

When Zimmerman dips her plankton net from a research boat into Willapa Bay, she is curious to learn more about the plankton communities. Back at the lab, the team can look at what the plankton eat, how they grow, and see what species might be moving around to new places.

Zimmerman also studies plankton that live in the Columbia River and Vancouver Lake. She reminded me that the amount of plankton we find can change depending on the season or the place. When she goes out to the lake in summer, she can sometimes find a million tiny plankton in just a single teaspoon of water.

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Dr. Universe