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Aug. 18-Sept. 13: Faculty ceramics at Museum of Art

August 18, 2014

A retrospective of ceramic works by retired fine arts faculty member Ann Christenson will be on exhibit Aug. 18-Sept. 13 at the Museum of Art at WSU Pullman. An opening reception will be at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28, in the museum gallery with a talk by the artist at 7 p.m. Admission to the museum is free.

Since 2004, the museum has presented works by fine arts faculty members, alternating large group shows with exhibits showcasing individual artists.

Christenson’s work often resembles a confluence of juxtapositions: organic yet geometric, industrial yet primeval, intimate yet worldly and awkward yet elegant. She draws influences from her cross-cultural experiences, her domestic environment, the historical diversity of ceramic art and the natural world in order to explore space and material.

Images and more about the show

Researcher sees survival story in fly’s small genome

August 13, 2014

Joanna Kelley, assistant professor of biology — Joanna Kelley

Scientists have just sequenced the genome of a fly native to Antarctica, the coldest, driest and windiest place on the planet, a finding that may lead to a wider understanding of how these bugs evolved to cope with the environment.

The fly, named Belgica antarctica, is a survivor, or as Washington State University evolutionary biologist Joanna Kelley likes to put it…an extremophile.

“This fly has to withstand freezing, extreme temperature changes so in the Antarctic summer it’s on the rocks and those are getting quite hot,” Kelley said. “But imagine the Antarctic winter, it’s very dark and cold. There’s a lot of UV [ultraviolet] radiation. There’s dehydration. And anything you can imagine as an extreme pressure, this fly probably encounters it.”

Continue reading the Voice of America story to learn more about how the surprisingly small DNA footprint of this polar insect may help it survive. (Audio also available.)

Kelley’s research was also featured on BBC Nature News, International Business Times, News Tonight Africa, Tech Times, Nature World News, WSU News, and many other online news outlets.

On Supreme Court, Does 9-0 Add Up to More Than 5-4?

August 13, 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a remarkable number of unanimous decisions last term, and in their public remarks the justices seemed unanimous in saying that unanimity was a good thing. But is it?

Michael F. Salamone, a political scientist at WSU, has designed experiments to test whether the public is more apt to accept unanimous decisions than divided ones.

Related research citing Salamone’s work concluded that “the idea that 5-4 decisions pose a serious problem of credibility or legitimacy [for the court] remains an unproven hypothesis.” How hard, then, should the justices work to achieve unanimity?

Read more about Salamone’s research in the ABA Journal; also in the New York Times (subscription required).

Discovery opens new path to superfast quantum computing

June 4, 2014

Researchers at Washington State University have used a super-cold cloud of atoms that behaves like a single atom to see a phenomenon predicted 60 years ago and witnessed only once since.

The phenomenon takes place in the seemingly otherworldly realm of quantum physics and opens a new experimental path to potentially powerful quantum computing.

Working out of a lab in WSU’s Webster Hall, physicist Peter Engels and his colleagues cooled about one million atoms of rubidium to 100 billionths of a degree above absolute zero. There was no colder place in the universe, said Engels, unless someone was doing a similar experiment elsewhere on Earth or on another planet.

Learn more

Smarter than your average bear

June 3, 2014

Peeka, a 9-year-old grizzly housed at the WSU Bear Center, earns top place for demonstrating the most systematic ability to foil human security efforts. On her own, she learned a three-step process enabling her to slide open a door leading to an enclosed pen. Using her massive paw, she undid a spring-loaded clip; lifted a latch; then slid a bolt.

“Whenever I’d hear the clip hit the floor, I knew I had about two seconds to vacate the pen before the door would swing open,” said Charlie Robbins, a wildlife nutritionist who founded the one-of-a kind center in the 1980s. Robbins installed a more sophisticated type of latch on the pen, but Peeka figured that one out as well.