Skip to main content Skip to navigation
CAS in the Media Arts and Sciences Media Headlines

Trailblazing Transgender Doctor Saved Countless Lives

In February 1918 Alan L. Hart was a talented, up-and-coming 27-year-old intern at San Francisco Hospital. Hart, who stood at 5’4″ and weighed about 120 pounds, mixed well with his colleagues at work and afterward—smoking, drinking, swearing and playing cards. His round glasses hemmed in his pensive eyes, a high white collar often flanked his dark tie, and his short hair was slicked neatly to the right. Though the young doctor’s alabaster face was smooth, he could deftly go through the motions of shaving with a safety razor. A photograph of a woman, who he had told colleagues was his wife, hung on his boarding-room wall.

Hart grew up female but, since childhood, had secretly identified as male and was attracted to women. Though she covertly dated several women throughout college, she largely kept her feelings hidden. Then one day, plagued by a phobia that was unrelated to her gender identity or sexual orientation, she sought help from her University of Oregon Medical School professor. After two weeks of deliberation, Hart revealed her entire life story.

Peter Boag.
Boag

“When uncovering the story of someone from the past, especially someone from the early 20th century—someone who, today, we would identify as transgender,” says Peter Boag, a history professor at Washington State University and an award-winning LGBT historian, “we have to remember that, although the trans identity is recent in history, people often forget that trans people lived in the past. Uncovering the story of any trans person is not just something that affirms trans people’s existence today. It rewrites our history.”

Find out more

Scientific American

Indiana Jones and the quest for truth

The fictional archaeologist has a special spot in pop culture, with four movies and a fifth on the way. The films have grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide. The American Film Institute lists “Raiders of the Lost Ark” at No. 66 on its list of 100 greatest American movies of all time. The character ranked No. 2 on its 100 greatest heroes and villains list, right behind Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird.” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. While it lost to “Chariots of Fire,” it picked up wins in art direction, sound, film editing and special effects.

John Blong.
Blong

The real process for beginning an archaeological adventure takes more preparation. Field work starts with a consultation with the group that owns the land, whether its state, federal or private, said John Blong, assistant professor of anthropology at Washington State University in Pullman. This process also includes a plan for what happens to artifacts that may be discovered on the site, a detail left out in the “Indiana Jones” movies.

Rachel Horowitz.
Horowitz

Sometimes the answer is in the landscape before an archaeologist’s eyes, which is how Rachel Horowitz, assistant professor of anthropology at WSU, makes her discoveries. Horowitz specializes in finding stone tools in the Maya region. Mounds on the ground indicate where people once lived.

Erin Thornton.
Thornton

To Erin Thornton, associate professor of anthropology at WSU, Indy misses all the good finds when he brushes past the skeletons. Her work involves analyzing human and animal bones.

Find out more

Inland360

Pathogenic Invasions: Changing Community Networks Impact Disease Spread

xueying snow wang.
Wang

The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the importance of understanding precisely how diseases spread throughout networks of transportation. However, rigorously determining the connection between disease risk and changing networks — which either humans or the environment may alter — is challenging due to the complexity of these systems. In a paper publishing today (Thursday, June 10, 2021) in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, Stephen Kirkland (University of Manitoba), Zhisheng Shuai (University of Central Florida), P. van den Driessche (University of Victoria), and Xueying Wang, associate professor of mathematics (Washington State University) study the way in which changes in a network of multiple interconnected communities impact the ensuing spread of disease. The four researchers were hosted as a Structured Quartet Research Ensemble by the American Institute of Mathematics.

The authors utilized their results to explore possible strategies for controlling disease outbreaks by introducing new connections on a network or changing the strength of existing connections. “Our findings from both the star and the path networks highlight that the placement of the hot spot and the connections among patches are crucial in determining the optimal strategy for reducing the risk of an infection,” Wang said. The researchers’ techniques quantified the effectiveness of different approaches in controlling invasibility and found the mathematical conditions under which it is best to change the amount of movement between certain locations.

Find out more

Scitech Daily
News Medical

WSU WORD! Fellows inspire faculty to teach writing in their disciplines

Eleven Washington State University faculty members are at work on special plans for the coming year: assigning and evaluating their students’ writing assignments in new ways.

As invited participants in the inaugural WORD! Faculty Fellowship Program—called “Word! Fellows”—the professors spent 12 weeks as learners themselves. In weekly workshop sessions, the experienced educators from several disciplines—most of whom teach large classes—were challenged to think about how to help students write as members in their disciplines.

Paul Buckley.
Buckley

Now that the workshops have ended, WORD! members like Paul Buckley, associate professor of chemistry, are crafting new student writing assignments for fall.

“Before WORD!, I thought writing lab reports was a pretty straightforward task for students, but now I’m more aware that I can phrase writing assignments to be more understandable to STEM and non-STEM students and encourage them all to experiment a little more with how they express things,” he said. He said it will be important for him to explain the changes to his teaching assistants who help with grading.

Find out more

WSU Insider

 

Historian researching secret investigation of radioactive fallout

After years of polluting Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems with nuclear material from atomic bomb tests, the U.S. government in 1953 launched “Project Sunshine,” a secret, international program to study the amount of radioactive fallout in the environment. The cheery-sounding program sought particularly to understand the impact of strontium 90, an unstable, radioactive version of a naturally occurring element which threatened to riddle people and animals with cancer.

Jeffrey Sanders.
Sanders

Now, novel research by Jeffrey Sanders, associate professor of history at Washington State University, is shedding new light on Project Sunshine and the intersection of environmental history, Cold War culture and the production of scientific knowledge.

“Just as radioactive strontium moved through ecological systems, this project follows the twists and turns of strontium 90 through different atomic cultures between 1945 and 2000,” Sanders said.

Find out more

WSU Insider