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Workshop Demystifies Grant Application Process

Just what does it take to get a grant or fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities? The Office of Grant and Research Development (OGRD) and the College of Arts and Sciences will sponsor an NEH Grant Application Writing Workshop on March 21 to explain the process.

Workshop host, NEH program director Dr. John Cox, will present and answer questions about the grant process, with an emphasis on writing and application review. Participants will also learn about NEH programs and special initiatives. A representative from Humanities Washington will also take part in the daylong event.

The workshop will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m in CUE 518. Dr. Cox and the Humanities Washington representative will meet individually with WSU faculty and graduate students for pre-arranged appointments until 5:00 p.m and individual appointments will be available on March 22 from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. as well.

Seating is limited and advanced registration is required.

Findings from senior thesis published in Appetite journal

“The problem is no longer food scarcity, but too much food,” said Halley Morrison, a recent WSU biology graduate and author of an interdisciplinary Honors College senior thesis that was published in the journal Appetite.

Morrison, together with Tom Power, professor and chair of the human development department, analyzed more than 200 mother-child surveys and found that a mother’s eating habits and behavior at the dinner table can influence her preschooler’s obesity risk.

Read more at WSU News and Appetite.

Epigenetic Disease Inheritance Linked to Plastics and Jet Fuel

WSU researchers have lengthened their list of environmental toxicants that can negatively affect as many as three generations of an exposed animal’s offspring.

Michael Skinner portraitWriting in the online journal PLOS ONE, scientists led by WSU molecular biologist Michael Skinner document reproductive disease and obesity in the descendants of rats exposed to various plastic compounds (including BPA). In a separate article in the journal Reproductive Toxicology, they report the first observation of cross-generation disease from a widely used hydrocarbon jet fuel mixture the military refers to as JP8.

Both studies are the first of their kind to see obesity stemming from the process of “epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.

Read more →

Professor’€™s expertise informs public about Mali invasion

Peter Chilson
Peter Chilson

Months of onsite investigative journalism by Washington State University English professor Peter Chilson into al-Qaeda’s takeover of northern Mali last spring have recently put him in high demand with the national and international media.

The flurry began when France intervened in the Malian crisis last week in an attempt to halt a further incursion by Islamists to gain control of Bamako, Mali’s capital city, and the rest of the country. The French intervention has received support from the international community, including the United States and several European nations.

The incursion coincided with the release of Chilson’s e-book, “We Never Knew Exactly Where: Dispatches from the Lost Country of Mali,” published by Foreign Policy magazine and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a media clearinghouse supporting writers who cover global conflicts for the U.S. media. The e-book, announced in Foreign Policy’s January/February issue, examines the implications of al-Qaeda’s newest base of operation and decries their devastation of ancient cultural icons. Links to selected Chilson radio interviews and to the e-book are available below.

“Peter Chilson’s work in Mali is some of the finest crisis reporting we’ve seen in a long time,” said Tom Hundley, senior editor, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. “Peter’s graceful writing, his deep knowledge of the subject, his gift for storytelling and willingness to go to where the real story was unfolding – all of this has made for a very rewarding piece of journalism…that will inevitably inform policy discussions on the future of Mali.”

Read more about Chilson’s work