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Transfer student sets sights on law career following spinal cord injury

Climaco Abarca.
Abarca

When Climaco Abarca was 15 years old, he lost the ability to walk following a paralyzing diving accident. While the accident changed the course of the Washington State University Tri-Cities junior’s life, it did not stop him from going to college and helping others in similar circumstances.

“Everyone would struggle with waking up one day and not being able to walk,” he said. “It is incredibly hard and there are many people that don’t think they could do it, but at the end of the day, you have to live and overcome. I have learned to live with my disability, and I don’t let it affect me. I have strong family support that is what has kept me motivated. I want to set a good example for them.”

Abarca has sought the help of WSU Tri-Cities TRIO Student Success Programs, which provides tutoring support, mentorship, help with financial aid and more for students who are low-income, first-generation and/or have a documented disability. Particularly, he said, being paired with a supplemental instructor for some of his classes has been crucial to his success.

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WSU Insider
YakTriNews

Ask Dr. Universe: Why do bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs make the water different colors?

One of the most eye-catching hot springs in Yellowstone National Park is the bright and colorful Grand Prismatic Spring. It’s blue in the middle with bands of colors ranging from green and yellow to orange and reddish-brown.

Peter Larson.
Larson

My friend Peter Larson is a geologist at Washington State University who is very curious about hot springs. He spent much of his research career in Yellowstone National Park.

Larson said that when we look into the hot spring, we are seeing the colors of tiny living things called cyanobacteria.

Some cyanobacteria also make pigments such as carotenoids, which help them use chlorophyll. Carotenoids can also provide them with some protection from the sun. When we see orangish parts of the hot springs, there are likely some carotenoid-making cyanobacteria in the water.

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Ask Dr. Universe

 

The Ancient Art of Raising Turkeys

Across America, families are likely squirreling away turkeys into chest freezers for Thanksgiving. But earlier this month, Butterball CEO Jay Jandrain warned of a potential shortage of small birds during the holiday season. This threatens the long tradition of Thanksgiving turkey, which has nebulous origins in early colonial New England. Yet Indigenous people’s relationship with the ubiquitous bird goes back more than two thousand years.

William Lipe.
Lipe

“I can visualize the blanket-maker calming a familiar household-raised turkey so it could be held in that person’s lap while some of its mature body feathers were carefully and painlessly removed for use in the blanket,” William Lipe, a Southwestern archaeologist and professor emeritus at Washington State University, says.

After the great migration, the Pueblo people relied less on turkeys for sustenance. Their new territory once again offered plentiful big game to hunt. Still, some traditions lived on. Today, you can hear turkey gobbles in many New Mexican Pueblos.

The Reason Restaurateur Is ‘Missing’ a Letter

Paul Brians.
Brians

The English language can be very confusing, and this is especially true when it comes to using (or misusing) words or phrases borrowed from another language. For some reason, French loan words seem to give us particular trouble.

For example, former professor of English Paul Brians of Washington State University points out, the word “amateur” is often misspelled as “amature.” Yet another common error listed on the professor’s website is made by those who confuse the terms “protégé” and “prodigy.” The former is someone you’ve taken under your wing, but the latter is someone extraordinary, and only in rare instances are they likely to be one and the same.

As anyone who browses online recipes and tutorials is probably aware, there are more than a few people who seem to be under the impression that “voilà” should be spelled “wallah.” (As per Brians’ site, the word “wallah” is actually Hindi for “worker.”) One understandably misspelled word from the food world describes somebody who owns or operates a restaurant. That word is obviously “restauranteur,” right? Well yes, it would be, were “restauranteur” an actual word, but it isn’t. The word you really want is “restaurateur,” spelled without an “n.”

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mashed

 

What could you eat 400 years ago in the Pacific Northwest?

Today it’s all about Cosmic Crisp apples, winter wheat and wine grapes, but 400 years ago Washington state’s food environment looked a lot different.

The mechanized system of food production has churned over recent centuries, but when the land was occupied only by Indigenous people whose ties to the land had deep roots, the Pacific Northwest served an abundance of helpful herbs, fragrant flowers, fat-rich fish and vital vegetables that could easily make a feast.

Shannon Tushingham.
Tushingham

Other fish like sturgeon, lamprey eels, suckers and various species of traits also helped sustain these communities. Diets for people in the Northwest also included a fat-rich fish called eulachon, found in the rivers, Washington State University anthropology researcher Shannon Tushingham told WSU Insider earlier this year.

Molly Carney.
Carney

WSU archaeology researcher Molly Carney studied how often Indigenous tribes used camas root and found the onionlike bulbs were a critical part of the cuisine, according to a WSU News article this year.

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Seattle Times