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WSU cannabis research innovations at Science Pub Feb. 8

Carrie Cuttler.
Cuttler

From vapor self-administering-rodents to personal apps and Zoom smoke sessions, Ryan McLaughlin and Carrie Cuttler have had to get creative to study cannabis. The Washington State University researchers will discuss the legal challenges and the novel workarounds they’ve developed in a Science Pub talk at 6 p.m. on Feb. 8 at Paradise Creek Brewery and on Zoom.

“We need this research urgently because these high potency products are being sold, and they’re very popular,” said Cuttler, an assistant professor of psychology. “As researchers, we have our hands tied and can’t really touch these products. It’s important to find workarounds, so that we can start to better understand their acute effects because there’s really been no research on them.”

Cuttler takes her studies out into the “wild” to better understand the effects of cannabis people actually use. She’s analyzed user-reported data from the Strainprint app and recently used Zoom to track and test psychological effects of cannabis on the users.

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WSU Insider

‘Work is the most important way of proving your worth,’ and it’s making Americans miserable: professor

Jennifer Sherman.
Sherman

In the early 2000s, Jennifer Sherman, a professor of sociology at Washington State University, went to study a poverty-stricken mountain town in Northern California for her thesis.

What she found upon meeting folks on the ground was that “every interview, people just talked about their own work ethic, somebody else lacking work ethic, or the value of hard work,” she tells Grow. Even in the absence of jobs, work remained key in measuring human value. With whatever external proof they could find, “people really, really did make the big show of letting me know that, ‘I’m a worker,’” she says.

Researchers and psychologists point to 3 pillars of messaging in American culture that hugely shape this thinking: the Protestant work ethic, the emphasis on individualism, and what gives one status in the States.

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cnbc

WSU’s nuclear reactor pool gets a new coat

The tank that holds WSU’s research nuclear reactor will soon be coated with a new, flexible epoxy lining without the reactor ever having to leave its watery home.

The university’s Nuclear Science Center has a unique reactor pool: a relatively large, rectangular concrete-walled tank about 25-feet deep and filled with 65,000 gallons of water. Near the bottom, the glowing blue reactor core rests in a square box. It’s hooked to a bridge on a track so it can be moved to one side of the pool while work is done on the other, keeping it constantly under several feet of protective, highly deionized water.

The work, which started last week at the Dodgen Research Facility on the Pullman campus, should take about five weeks, but it’s the result of a much longer process.

Xiaofeng Guo.
Guo
Liane Moreau.
Moreau

The Center has also expanded lab space, and two WSU faculty, Xiofeng Guo and Liane Moreau, who work in chemistry and materials development, are setting up work there.

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WSU Insider

Donations to Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Salvation Army through group also funding far-right interests draws scrutiny

A Virginia-based charity that facilitated donations to the Catholic Diocese of Spokane and the local chapter of the Salvation Army in 2020 also handled funds that were given to groups espousing white nationalist views and one group that helped organize a rally before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Travis Ridout.
Ridout

That might explain why groups such as DonorsTrust handle donations for churches and other civic organizations, said Travis Ridout, the Thomas S. Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy at Washington State University who studies political giving and spending.

“I didn’t find it particularly surprising,” Ridout said of DonorsTrust’s activity. “These groups that are involved in politics, if they want to remain dark money groups and keep that tax-exempt status, they have to at least pretend that really their primary purpose isn’t political, and may donate to nonpolitical groups as well as the political groups.”

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The Spokesman-Review

In the Caribbean, It’s Not Christmas Without Black Cake

All across the English-speaking Caribbean, the Christmas treat known as black cake is such a cherished and anticipated tradition that preparations for next year’s cake often start on New Year’s Day. That’s because one of the distinctive ingredients of this dense, spiced cake is an assortment of dried fruits — raisins, currants, prunes and citrus peel — steeped for months in a boozy bath of rum, wine and/or cherry brandy.

Candice Goucher.
Goucher

We spoke with Candice Goucher, professor emerita of history at Washington State University and author of “Congotay! Congotay! A Global History of Caribbean Food,” to learn more about the origins of black cake and why you can’t celebrate a legit Caribbean Christmas without it.

“Black cake itself has been described as something between an English plum pudding and a pound cake, but it’s much more than that,” says Goucher.

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howstuffworks