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CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

The mystery and beauty of pi

Who better than an expert mathematician to help celebrate the fourteenth day of the third month of the year, unofficially known as Pi Day for the numeric expression it shares with the the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle: 3.14.

Charles Moore.Professor Charles N. Moore, PhD and chair of Washington State University’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, provides a brief overview of the scientific significance of pi in a new video being shared broadly today on WSU’s social media channels.

“Pi is both troublesome and mysterious,” Moore explains. “A circle is something very simple and beautiful, yet the number pi is not.”

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WSU Insider

Who’s been sleeping?

This last winter, the 11 grizzlies at the WSU Bear Center were doing what they do best: a lot of nothing, and Washington State University researchers want to know exactly how they do that so well.

Charles Robbins.
Robbins

“We’re getting more and more interest from other researchers that bears might be a good model for what they’re studying,” says Charles Robbins, the wildlife biologist who first launched the bear program at WSU 36 years ago.

Joanna Kelley.
Kelley

WSU evolutionary geneticist Joanna Kelley is currently using cell cultures taken for that study to investigate which genes are being activated in response to the ingestion of glucose before, during, and after hibernation. Her research team hopes to identify proteins that are changing the cells’ uptake of the sugar-regulating hormone, insulin. Diabetes in humans occurs when the body loses its ability to produce or respond to insulin.

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WSU Insider

WebMD

NewsMax

Beasts of the Ice Age

Not so long ago, large creatures roamed the Pullman area. Formidable beasts journeyed through the plains of the Palouse during the last Ice Age.

Fossils of mastodons, distant mammoth relatives, were found a few hours from Seattle, according to Washington State Magazine. At the site in Sequim, WSU professor Carl Gustafson uncovered evidence humans hunted the giant beasts: a spear tip embedded in a fossilized rib. Gustafson’s finding revolutionized the timeline of human presence in North America, revealing humans arrived in North America at least 800 years earlier than previously thought.

Gustafson’s discovery remains one of the most significant in WSU history. He also unearthed mammoth bones in central Washington, according to the Seattle Times. After nearly 40 years of teaching, Gustafson retired from WSU in 1998. He passed away in 2016, leaving a legacy of mammoth proportions. You can visit the Conner Museum on the ground floor of Abelson Hall to see a fossilized mammoth femur and mastodon teeth in person.

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Daily Evergreen

WSU named top producer of Fulbright U.S. Scholars

Washington State University is among the colleges and universities that produced the most Fulbright U.S. Scholars in 2021-22, said the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

“For 2021-2022, WSU has three faculty members—two from Pullman and one from Vancouver—who applied for and received Fulbright U.S. Scholar awards, and we are very proud of their achievement,” said Laura Griner Hill, WSU senior vice provost. She serves as one of WSU’s campus representatives for Fulbright Scholars.

Members of CAS among WSU’s 2021-22 Fulbright U.S. Scholars

Carolyn Long
Long
  • Carolyn N. Long, WSU Vancouver associate professor in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, is at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia where she is teaching on the subject of American politics. She was also a Fulbright scholar there in 2009-2010.
  • Jeffrey Sanders.
    Sanders

    Jeffrey C. Sanders, WSU Pullman associate professor in the Department of History, is at Cardiff University in Wales continuing his research into radiation movement through global ecosystems.

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WSU Insider

Update: Tri-City high school student’s documentary to premiere on the big screen

A Tri-Cities filmmaker will have the premiere of his first feature-length documentary at Fairchild Cinemas in Richland later this month.

Augustin Dulauroy has been making short videos with friends since middle school and had a short film he directed selected for the All American Film Festival in New York last fall.

Robert Franklin.
Franklin

He interviewed experts on Hanford like Robert Franklin, president of the B Reactor Museum Association and assistant professor of History at Washington State University Tri-Cities, and health physicist Ron Kathren, the first professor emeritus for WSU Tri-Cities.

The documentary was released on Amazon Prime Video USA on March 2 and on Vimeo-On-Demand Worldwide on March 3.

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Tri-City Herald