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More than just music at WSU

Co-assistant leaders of WSU Marching Band say job is about forming bonds, spreading Cougar spirit

Experiencing a Washington State University football game or sporting event would not quite be the same with a recorded playing of the fight song or without the steady beat of a drum line.

Sarah Miller
Miller
Brent Edwards
Edwards

“Think about what would happen if there was no music,” said Brent Edwards, co-assistant director of the Washington State University Marching Band and instructor in the School of Music.

The marching band delivers something unique not only to the university, but to the community as a whole. Edwards and his co-assistant director, Sarah Miller, clinical assistant professor of music, are part of the team that builds that ever-spirited group of musicians.

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Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Salmon Sex Reshapes Rivers

Alexander Fremier
Alexander Fremier

Many forces shape the planet’s rugged features: wind, water, fire, and, of course, salmon sex.

That’s the conclusion from Washington State University researcher Alex Fremier and colleagues in a study that’s billed as one of the first attempts to quantify the earth-shaping power of spawning salmon. They titled their study, in part, “Sex That Moves Mountains,” and it’s a new take on the ways living things transform habitats.

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Exploding Head Syndrome

Brian Sharpless, Director, Psychology Clinic
Brian Sharpless

The unusual name will certainly get your attention, but fortunately Exploding Head Syndrome is not life-threatening or physically harmful. In a recent study more than 10 percent of people experienced the syndrome, a sleep disorder in which crashing or exploding sounds make it difficult to fall and stay asleep.

Dr. Brian Sharpless, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Washington State University and author of Sleep Paralysis, explains that instead of the auditory neurons in the brain shutting down in the process of going to sleep, they all fire at once causing the loud noises.

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Radio Health Journal

Researchers Look for Dawn of Human Information Sharing

Luke Premo
Luke Premo

Every day, information washes over the world like so much weather. From casual conversations, tweets, texts, emails, advertisements and news stories, humanity processes countless discrete pieces of socially transmitted information.

Anthropologists call this process cultural transmission, and there was a time when it did not exist, when humans or more likely their smaller brained ancestors did not pass on knowledge. Luke Premo, an associate professor of anthropology at Washington State University, would like to know when that was. Writing in the October issue of Current Anthropology, he and three colleagues challenge a widely accepted notion that cultural transmission goes back more than 2 million years.

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Laboratory Equipment

WSU professor: Don’t get spooked by nukes

Expert tries to calm fears, raises concerns about North Korean nuclear crisis

Threat of a nuclear attack on the United States by North Korea may sound scarier than anything Halloween could bring, but Washington State University professor Thomas Preston believes the threat to the U.S. is not as scary as some might think.

Tom PrestonPreston, a C.O. Johnson Distinguished Professor of political science at WSU, shared his thoughts on the North Korean nuclear crisis in a continuation of the Foley Institute’s Coffee and Politics Series on Tuesday afternoon on the WSU campus.

When his book “From Lambs to Lions: Future Security Relationships in a World of Biological and Nuclear Weapons” was published in 2007, Preston said North Korea was then early on in its proliferation of nuclear weapons. Since then, Preston said, the country has developed more redundant capabilities.

The real threat, currently, is to North Korea’s neighbors. Half of South Korea’s population is located within 25 miles of the Korean Demilitarized Zone – that’s closer than Lewiston is to Pullman, Preston said. And besides its nuclear capabilities, North Korea has a large chemical weapons arsenal and a biological weapons program to boot.

Preston said people should keep those facts in mind when pondering why the U.S. does not just attack North Korea. More than 16 million people could be at risk of North Korea’s capabilities, Preston said, and a new Korean war could cause an estimated 1 million casualties.

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Moscow-Pullman Daily News