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WSU students return as mentors at migrant academy

When Gizelle Sandoval arrived on the Washington State University Pullman campus a few years ago for the Dare to Dream Math and Science Academy, the high school junior wasn’t sure wasn’t sure she wanted to be here.

The only world she knew was helping her parents pick fruit in the Yakima Valley, and she didn’t care much for school.

Sandoval

The Dare to Dream Academy, an annual summer program organized by the Office of the Superintendent for Public Instruction’s Migrant Education Program in partnership with WSU’s College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), changed her life. Now a WSU junior majoring in criminal justice, Sandoval returned to the academy the last week of June as a mentor.

“As a high school student, the program’s mentors made me feel really comfortable and provided me with a great support group,” she said. “I’m really glad to have the opportunity to now serve as a mentor for others.”

About 180 high school junior and seniors, all from migrant families around the state, were invited to the academy to brush up on their math or science skills. Those who complete the rigorous curriculum taught by WSU instructors receive high school credit.

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Empire Press

WSU News

Police Officer’s Bodycams – Researching Use of Force

Criminal justice experts at Washington State University (WSU) are developing innovative technology to improve police–community relations, officer training and public safety.

David MakinResearchers in the new Complex Social Interaction (CSI) laboratory at WSU are using body-worn cameras and advanced scientific tools and techniques—such as data analytics, biometrics and machine learning—to examine the complex factors that shape interactions between police and community members. The interdisciplinary, intercollegiate research team is led by David Makin, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology.

It is the first to explore police officer decision-making and interpersonal interaction by examining data from body-worn cameras, Makin said. “This cutting-edge research and technology will provide revolutionary insight into police practice as well as real-world applications for improving organizations and decision-making at the individual level.”

The team is using the information to design algorithms and new software to help public safety agencies improve police-community relations, reduce conflict, cost and liability, and enhance the health and well-being of law officers and their communities, Makin said.

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Israeli Homeland Security

Biometric Update

WSU News

Electronic Literature Organization moves to WSU Vancouver

The Electronic Literature Organization, which promotes and preserves “born-digital literature,” is moving west to Washington State University Vancouver from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dene Grigar
Grigar

WSU Vancouver, where organization president Dene Grigar is a professor and director of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program, will host the 20-year-old organization, which migrates around the U.S. periodically, for the next five years.

Grigar said the premise of born-digital literature is that “the computer can be used as a form of creative expression.” It’s also a genre that must be read electronically; “it’s not like Emily Dickinson on the web,” she said. As examples, she cited poet Thom Swiss’ “Shy Boy,” which features music, scheduling and text animation, and screenwriter Kate Tullinger’s interactive digital novel “Inanimate Alice,” among others.

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The Oregonian

WSU News

Some Chemicals May Alter Gene Function for Several Generations

Michael Skinner portrait
Michael Skinner

Groundbreaking research by Mohan Manikkam and Michael Skinner of Washington State University at Pullman helped establish the principle of transgenerational toxicity by showing how toxic chemicals affect subsequent generations that are not directly exposed.

In one study, the researchers tested the transgenerational impacts of mixtures of chemicals that people are commonly exposed to in everyday life, including bug repellents, plastics additives and jet fuel.

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ewg.org

The surface of Mars is probably too toxic for bacteria to survive

 

Dirk Schulze-Makuch
Dirk Schulze-Makuch

Mars is not a very welcoming place. It’s cold, there’s hardly any atmosphere, and its bombarded with deep space radiation. Even the soil wants to kill you; as the Phoenix lander confirmed in 2009, the Martian regolith is laced with perchlorates—chlorine-based compounds that, when heated up, can rip apart organic materials, like cells and their building blocks.

To try to find out exactly what those perchlorates might do to Martian microorganisms, researchers at the University of Edinburgh pitted bacteria against this compound in a battery of tests. What they found does not bode well for the search for life on Mars: Under Mars-like conditions, the perchlorates were indeed toxic to the microbes.

“We knew before that any life would have an incredibly hard time to survive on the surface, and this study experimentally confirms that,” says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an astrobiologist at Washington State University, who wasn’t involved in the new study.

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