CAS in the Media | Washington State University

^{CAS in the Media} _{Arts and Sciences Media Headlines}

Need for a better microscope prompts launch of a startup

January 6, 2017 will.ferguson

Washington State University physicist Matthew McCluskey wasn’t trying to invent the next generation of material characterization microscopes, but when he couldn’t get the results he wanted from the best on the market, he improvised.

Four years later, McCluskey launched Klar Scientific, a startup designing and manufacturing an innovative, new instrument that collects more information about materials in less time and at a lower cost than what is currently on the market. The company is the recipient of a $210,000 National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grant to bring the affordable and easy to use microscope to market.

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WSU News

Opinion: Stop dismissing Standing Rock Sioux as dupes

January 3, 2017 adriana

Sinister forces are at work in North Dakota. At least that was the claim of the state’s former lieutenant governor, whose paranoid fears were right out of the eighteenth century, writes Lawrence Hatter, assistant professor of early American history at Washington State University.

Taking a leaf from a political playbook as old as the American Republic, then-Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley dismissed the Standing Rock Sioux opposition to the planned oil pipeline in that state as the work of ominous powers. “The Native Americans are being used, absolutely being used,” Wrigley told reporters Dec. 8, “by these outside agitators.”

His statement could just have easily have been made in 1786 as 2016.

Dismissing the Standing Rock Sioux as dupes is a strategy intended to discredit the grounds of their opposition, while also undermining their efforts to form a broader coalition for political mobilization against the North Dakota pipeline.

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Grand Forks Herald

Examining toddler temperament around the globe

December 20, 2016 will.ferguson

How do parents’ cultural values affect their babies’ temperament?

Maria (Masha) Gartstein, professor of psychology, is on a multi-year quest to find out.

For the past five years, Gartstein has compared the behavior of babies from around the globe to learn how parents’ values and expectations influence the development of their toddlers’ behavior and overall temperament.

A greater understanding of these values and their impact on temperament development will help psychologists devise fine-tuned approaches to prevent infant temperament issues from becoming behavioral problems later in life.

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Computer models find ancient solutions to modern problems

December 20, 2016 will.ferguson

Washington State University archaeologists are at the helm of new research using sophisticated computer technology to learn how past societies responded to climate change.

Their work, which links ancient climate and archaeological data, could help modern communities identify new crops and other adaptive strategies when threatened by drought, extreme weather and other environmental challenges.

In a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, assistant professor of anthropology, and WSU colleagues Stefani Crabtree, Kyle Bocinsky and Tim Kohler examine how recent advances in computational modeling are reshaping the field of archaeology.

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Health Medicine Network

NewHistorian

Association for Computing Machinery

Paste Magazine

Treehugger

North Africa women researcher share among world highest

December 19, 2016 adriana

University World News asked Julie Kmec, a professor of sociology at Washington State University in the United States, what factors were behind high female participation in science and research in predominantly Muslim countries.

“Studies indicate that this pattern emerges from a complex relationship between a country’s macro-cultural value systems regarding individualism and gender, the gender labelling of curricular and work fields, the organisational configuration of a country’s education system, and a country’s economic opportunity structures,” she explained.

“Overall, these countries may promote collectivism over individualism, gender label STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] fields as ‘masculine’ less-so than other countries, and their developing economies may shape choice.”

Kmec is also one of the principal investigators for the project on Women in Engineering in Predominantly Muslim Countries, which aims to identify mechanisms that motivate women to pursue engineering in Arab countries, to be used in America’s higher education and research system.

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University World News