CAS in the Media | Washington State University

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Tools can help aged keep independence

December 23, 2014

Sometimes a simple tool to assist with putting on socks or opening jars can keep an elderly person or someone with disabilities living independently in their own home for longer.

WSU researchers are finding many people don’t know about helpful devices readily available on the market—such as medication reminders that talk, knives that rock to ease food cutting, large-grip utensils, electric door openers, money identifiers, and automatic electricity shutoffs.

That’s why students in the Department of Psychology and the College of Nursing recently made a series of informational videos highlighting common tools to assist people with everything from hearing, vision, and remembering important tasks—like taking medications—to daily duties such as cooking, dressing, and using the bathroom.

For many elderly, the discovery means freedom.

Find out more and take the survey to view several assistive technology options

Guest opinion: Senate report on torture a sad chapter for U.S.

December 22, 2014

In the wake of harrowing revelations about the CIA’s secret torture program, Cornell Clayton, professor of politics, philosophy, and public affairs and director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service at WSU, critiques disturbing reactions. “The tragedy,” Clayton says, “isn’t that torture failed. It’s that Americans resorted to it.

“Nations are not individuals or even extensions of individuals. A nation is its values and what it stands for. This is especially true of America, which has never been defined by a shared ethnic or religious identity, but only by our common ideals. Chief among these is the belief in human rights, the rule of law, and the dignity of the individual. Torture is an affront to these ideals.

“Those who insist that brutal terrorists who kill innocent civilians forfeit the right to humane treatment miss the point. It is not about who they are, but who we are. America is an exceptional nation because it embraces – often imperfectly – exceptional values. We lose if we abandon those values.”

Read Clayton’s entire guest opinion in the Spokesman-Review

Mapp’s passing reminds us police (mis)treatment of suspects not new

December 19, 2014

On Oct. 31, the day after her 91st birthday, Ms. Dollree Mapp, of the 1961 landmark Supreme Court decision, Mapp v. Ohio, died. Carolyn N. Long, associate professor in the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at WSU Vancouver and author of Mapp v. Ohio: Guarding Against Unreasonable Searches and Seizures, asserts: “There has been insufficient progress in police professionalism since 1957 when Ms. Mapp … stood up to the aggressive police tactics” of the Bureau of Special Investigation of Cleveland, Ohio.

In her guest column published by Cleveland.com, Long says, “Mapp’s passing, which was not widely reported when it happened, bears mention in light of the Justice Department’s damning report on police practices in Cleveland and the recent death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, an African-American child shot and killed by a Cleveland officer for carrying a toy gun the officer thought was a weapon.”

King’s DNA throws a curve ball; WSU scholars weigh in

December 18, 2014

WSU historian Jesse Spohnholz, left, and molecular anthropologist Brian Kemp. Skeleton in foreground is not that of King Richard III. (Photo by Shelly Hanks, WSU Photo Services)

The recent announcement that a skeleton found under a parking lot in England two years ago is that of King Richard III has laid one mystery to rest – while giving rise to another.

Findings of a study published this month in the journal Nature Communications confirmed the skeleton as that of the English monarch who was killed in battle in 1485. But the DNA analysis also lays bare the fact that a break – or breaks – occurred on the male side of the monarch’s family tree. In other words, a woman married to a king had a son from another man.

“Basically, the more information that was gleaned from retrieving the king’s DNA, the more complicated the story became,” said WSU molecular anthropologist Brian Kemp who, with WSU historian Jesse Spohnholz, read the report and commented on its findings.

“At what point in the royal lineage the infidelity occurred is not known, and to identify the break in the male line would require examining six centuries of marriages,” said Kemp, who is widely known for his genetic analyses of 10,000-year-old Native Americans.

Find out more

Localized climate change contributed to ancient depopulation

December 5, 2014

Washington State University researchers have detailed the role of localized climate change in one of the great mysteries of North American archaeology: the depopulation of southwest Colorado by ancestral Pueblo people in the late 1200s.

In the process, they address one of the mysteries of modern-day climate change: How will humans react?

Writing in Nature Communications, WSU archaeologist Tim Kohler and post-doctoral researcher Kyle Bocinsky use tree-ring data, the growth requirements of traditional maize crops and a suite of computer programs to make a finely scaled map of ideal Southwest growing regions for the past 2,000 years.

Their data paint a narrative of some 40,000 people leaving the Mesa Verde area of southwest Colorado as drought plagued the niche in which they grew maize, their main food source. Meanwhile, the Pajarito Plateau of the northern Rio Grande saw a large population spike.

Find out more