Three free, public events highlighting the central and inclusive nature of the humanities will be held Tuesday-Thursday, Feb. 17-19, on the WSU campus and at Neill Public Library in Pullman. A reception will follow each event. » More …
Although free for students, public education can cost cities big. In fact, education topped state and local government spending at $869.2 billion in 2012, according to the latest finance data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Even so, the quality of education students receive can vary drastically from city to city, but why?
David Charles Nice, WSU professor of political science, provided expert insights to questions about what makes some city school systems more effective than others; what factors influence a city’s ROI on education spending; how city education budgets fared in the recession and economic recovery; and more.
Find out more about education spending and the return on investment
If anyone ever noticed, which is unlikely, it appears that Linda Moulder and Jerry White have smoke detectors in every room of their home and a few other peculiar places—inside the refrigerator, for instance.
Visitors are much more interested in watching the cat wait for her automatic food dispenser to activate.
Yet to a cross-disciplinary team of WSU researchers, the 30 or so gadgets on the ceilings and walls are perhaps the future to helping the aging live safely and independently in their homes as long as possible. The technology that can keep tabs on mental and physical well-being could also ease the job of caregivers (often adult children who are still working and raising families), perhaps boosting their mental health and decreasing burnout.
This is critically important as the population ages and more people want to remain at home, avoiding nursing homes and other care facilities.
Imagine how cool it would be to detect rare or invasive species, study biodiversity or to estimate fish abundance with just a scoop of air or a dip of water. It’d be like science fiction come true. Well, science fiction is indeed becoming reality through a new sampling technology called environmental DNA.
Environmental DNA can be used in two ways. One is to identify the suite of creatures around a place. The other is to confirm the presence or absence of a specific critter, typically an invasive or endangered species.
Caren Goldberg runs the new eDNA lab at Washington State University in Pullman. She’s one of the first biologists in the Northwest to take the tool from demonstration experiments to practical application.
“It is extremely useful for species that are really hard to find,” says Goldberg.
Goldberg sees potential to get answers more efficiently, safely and with less destruction compared to traditional survey techniques such as electrofishing, snorkeling or netting.
American evangelicals have been waiting for the world to end for a long time. But that’s not to say they’ve just been sitting around. Apocalypticism has inspired evangelistic crusades, moral reform movements, and generations of political activism.
In his latest book, Matthew Avery Sutton, WSU professor of history, traces this history of American evangelical apocalypticism from the end of the 19th century to the present day. In the process, he proposes a revised understanding of American evangelicalism, focused on the urgent expectations of the end of human history. If you want to understand modern evangelicalism, Sutton says, you have to understand their End Times theology.
Daniel Silliman spoke with Sutton at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, in Heidelberg, Germany.