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Foley speaker: Take a deeper look at sexual violence

Paris professor gives insight into international sexual/gender-based violence

An influx of funding to prevent sexual/gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo may just be scratching the surface of a problem with a deeply complex undercurrent, said Jane Freedman, a professor of politics at the Universite de Paris 8 in Paris who spoke on the issue Monday afternoon as part of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service’s ongoing Coffee & Politics series at Washington State University Pullman

Gender-based violence, Freedman said, was first brought to the United Nations Security Council’s table at the start of the millennium, when it passed Resolution 1325, considered a landmark resolution for acknowledging the disproportionate impact of war on women in the form of sexual violence.

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Moscow-Pullman Daily News

Laser experiment hints at weird in-between ice

Marcus Knudson
Marcus Knudson

A proposed form of ice acts like a cross between a solid and a liquid. Now, a new study strengthens the case that the weird state of matter really exists.

Hints of the special phase, called superionic ice, appeared in water ice exposed to high pressures and temperatures, researchers report February 5 in Nature Physics. Although such unusual ice isn’t found naturally on Earth, it might lurk deep inside frozen worlds like Uranus and Neptune.

“It’s definitely providing more insight into water at these conditions,” says physicist Marcus Knudson of Washington State University in Pullman.

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Science News

Yakima Valley families cope with pain as loved ones’ murders remain unsolved

Amelie PedneaultParents of a man murdered in March 2017 expressed frustration with what they called a lack of communication with detectives on how the case is progressing.

That’s a common complaint with families of those killed in unsolved crimes, said Amelie Pedneault, an assistant professor of criminology at Washington State University. The lack of communication makes people think the case is not progressing or lacks importance to law enforcement, Pedneault said.

That leads to some families trying to investigate the crime on their own, she said.

She said researchers found a good solution is to have regular contact between police and the families, and even allowing them to see a case file so they know where the case stands.

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Yakima Herald

Tech red unmasked

John McCloy
John McCloy

Tech red, an enigmatic technetium compound that has resisted characterization for half a century, has been identified using chemical detective-work and computer modelling. The molecule’s unusual chemistry may explain why it has proven so difficult to unmask.

‘There are only a handful of laboratories who can work with large amounts of technetium, and even fewer who have access to anything other than simple characterization techniques,’ explains John McCloy, who investigates radioactive materials at Washington State University.

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Chemistry World

Fish influence mountain ranges

Alexander Fremier
Alexander Fremier

When asked if he would like water in his whisky W.C Fields famously remarked that he didn’t drink water because fish procreate in it (his actual words were somewhat racier). Migratory salmon do so in their millions with a great deal of energy, specifically in the gravel beds of high-energy streams.

As well as discouraging bibulous old men from diluting their liquor, it occurred to Alexander Fremier of Washington State University and other American colleagues that here was a noteworthy example of an active part of the biosphere physically intervening in the rock cycle. Not that it comes even close to what humans have become capable of since the Industrial Revolution, but it might be an object lesson in the fragility of what are otherwise the robust processes of erosion.

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Earth-pages