Washington State University researchers and adjunct faculty were part of the international research team that discovered gravitational waves in 2016. Science Magazine recently named the discovery its 2016 Breakthrough of the Year. The achievement fulfilled a prediction made 100 years ago by Albert Einstein and capped a 40-year quest to spot the ripples in spacetime.
Occasionally a big idea comes along that promises to revolutionize the world – think about things like self-driving cars. For biologists – especially those who work with fish and other aquatic plants and animals – eDNA is one of those big ideas. While scientists are only really beginning to understand the uses of eDNA, the technology is beginning to prove its worth.
“We don’t have to know everything about it [eDNA] to make it useful – as long as we’re accounting for errors,” says Caren Goldberg, an ecologist at Washington State University.
Matthew Tatz, graduate student in tuba, won first place recently in the young artist brass division at the Northwest Regional Music Teachers National Association Competition.
He advances to the national competition in Baltimore on March 20.
“Matt has worked diligently over the past few months in preparation and will undoubtedly bring distinction to the School of Music and Washington State University,” said WSU clinical assistant professor of music Chris Dickey.
A little more than 60 years after the invention of the first confocal microscope in 1955, two WSU researchers launched Klar Scientific, a company focused on finishing the final details of their own new and improved microscope that uses photoluminescence.
“Klar is German for clear,” said co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Matthew McCluskey, who is also a professor of physics and astronomy. “It’s like we are seeing things more clearly.”
What do you think about your own intelligence? Can you make yourself smarter over time, or are you stuck with the smarts you were born with? Your answer could reflect a key personality trait — namely, self-confidence — and whether you might want to help yourself to a big slice of humble pie.
It turns out, if you view your brainpower as a fixed, innate capacity, you’re also more likely to be … overconfident. This was suggested in a recent three-part study led by Joyce Ehrlinger of Washington State University. It found that students with a so-called “fixed mind-set” were more likely to overestimate their performance on a test than those with a “growth mind-set” (a belief that intelligence can change over time).