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• $1 Million Grant Advances Aquatic Exercise Research

  Thanks to a $1 million grant from the National Swimming Pool Foundation, Washington State University researchers plan to create the National Aquatics and Sports Medicine Institute. “This will be the world’s premiere center for aquatic health research,” said the institute director, Bruce Becker, a physician and research professor in WSU’s College of Education. “There is no other lab with this mission and focus. The foundation’s grant gives us tremendous movement forward. We intend to build on our initial research and fill the knowledge gaps of how water benefits our hearts, lungs and endocrine systems.” Read more

• WSU Researchers Do Landmark Shock Wave Experiments at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source

  A team of physicists from Washington State University has successfully completed the first experiments using the nation’s premiere synchrotron X-ray facility to detect shock wave-induced changes in a crystalline material. Read more

• Merial Licenses WSU DNA Testing Technology

  PULLMAN, Wash. -- Washington State University has signed a licensing agreement with Merial Limited., a world-leading animal health company, to commercialize DNA technology that will benefit beef and dairy cattle producers in the selection, breeding and management of their herds. The technology was originally developed by Zhihua Jiang, assistant professor of animal sciences. Read more

• Work, Rest, then Work Again: WSU Physicists Find Light-sensitive Molecule Can Heal Itself in the Dark

  According to a study by physicist Mark Kuzyk and colleagues at Washington State University, a molecule that loses its ability to fluoresce when struck by a laser beam regains that ability if it’s allowed to ‘rest’ in the dark. Recovery begins within 30 minutes and is nearly complete after 8 hours of rest, the study found. “It’s almost as if you have a piece of paper that’s yellowed over time, and you put it in a dark room for a day, and it comes back brand-new,” said Kuzyk. Read more

• Student Engineers Head to Kenya for Pipeline Project

  PULLMAN, Wash. -- A group of Washington State University engineering students will head to Kenya this month, where they hope to start work to design and build a needed water pipeline for residents there. The students, members of the WSU student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, hope to build a nine-mile long pipeline to bring fresh water to residents of Kayafungo, Kenya. Read more

• WSU Astronomer Finds Closest Gravitational Lensing Galaxy; Image Makes Hubble ‘Heritage’ List

  

  A giant elliptical galaxy seen in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope is the closest gravitational lens yet known, according to information released by the Hubble Heritage Project Tuesday (Feb. 6). Read more

• Whoosh! Goes the Internet: International Research Team Blazes the Optical Trail with Record-Setting Molecules

  

  The internet could soon shift into overdrive thanks to a new generation of optical molecules developed and tested by a team of researchers from Washington State University, the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Chinese Academy of Science in China. The new materials, organic molecules known as chromophores, interact more strongly with light than any molecules ever tested. That makes them, or other molecules designed along the same principles, prime candidates for use in optical technologies such as optical switches, internet connections, optical memory systems and holograms. The molecules were synthesized by chemists in China, evaluated according to theoretical calculations by a physicist at WSU and tested for their actual optical properties by chemists in Belgium. Read more

• Solar House Gets New Westside Home

  PULLMAN, Wash. – A solar home designed and built by a group of Washington State University students gets a new home this week at Shoreline Community College, where it will serve as a demonstration project on zero-energy building. Washington state Representative Maralyn Chase will speak at a dedication ceremony of the Solar Decathlon home, set for Thursday, May 17, at 2 p.m. The event will be held near the Campus Theater on the west side of the Shoreline Community College campus, 16101 Greenwood Avenue North, in Seattle. Read more

• New Analysis of Viking Mission Results Points to Possible Presence of Life on Mars

  

  PULLMAN, Wash. -- We may already have ‘met’ Martian organisms, according to a paper presented Sunday (Jan. 7) at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and Joop Houtkooper of Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany, argue that even as new missions to Mars seek evidence that the planet might once have supported life, we already have data showing that may show life exists there now—data from experiments done by the Viking Mars landers in the late 1970s. Read more

• WSU Astronomer Participates in Discovery of Early Universe Galaxies

  

  PULLMAN, Wash. – Hundreds of galaxies dating back nearly to the time of the Big Bang have been discovered through an analysis of the two deepest views of the cosmos ever taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The research was performed by a team of four astronomers that included John Blakeslee, an assistant professor with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washington State University. The researchers report finding some 500 galaxies that existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang – a time when the cosmos was less than 7 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. Their findings constitute the most comprehensive compilation of galaxies in the early universe. Read more

• Students to Eat, Drink, Sleep Their Research

  PULLMAN, Wash.-- Students participating in a new National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates this summer will be eating, drinking and sleeping their research. Literally. The students in engineering and computer science will be working to build a “smart’’ apartment that some of them will actually live in as part of their research projects relating to the development of “smart’’ environments. The two-bedroom apartment will be in the Steptoe Buildings in Pullman, Wash. Read more

• Honey Bee Genome Project Reveals Possible African Origin of All Honey Bees

  

  An international consortium of researchers announced this week that it has finished sequencing the entire genome -- all the DNA -- of the honey bee. Washington State University entomologist Walter S. (Steve) Sheppard, a member of the sequencing team, also co-authored a study that strongly suggests that honey bees originated in Africa and spread to Europe and Asia during at least two major migratory periods during their history. Read more

Related News

• Get a grip

  The traditional paper handling aid is that tan rubbery gizmo that accountants or postal workers place on their fingertips to easily shuffle pages. But, with help from WSU researchers, the Washington entrepreneurs selling Tippi Fingertip Grip (ONLINE @ www.tippibrand.com) hope paper-shufflers will replace those gizmos with their brightly-colored “grippier” grips.

• WSU Physicist Wang Receives Germany’s Humboldt Research Award

  Nanoscientist Lai-Sheng Wang, professor of physics and materials science at Washington State University Tri-Cities and affiliate chief scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists. The 60,000 Euro award, which is one of the top awards given by Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, recognizes Wang’s “past accomplishments in research and teaching.”

• Breakthrough in Molecular Design Could Unleash the Full Speed of the Internet

  PULLMAN, Wash. – Researchers at Washington State University have created design guidelines for new molecules that could enhance the speed of internet communications and other optical technologies.

• WSU Scientists Perfecting Mechanical Harvest of Sweet Cherries

  Rich, velvet-red, fresh sweet cherries are in high demand, and so are skilled laborers to harvest the highly perishable crop. However, labor shortages and labor costs may soon be a thing of the past for Northwest cherry producers, if consumers will accept their fresh cherries free of stems. In a project funded by Washington State University's International Marketing Program for Agricultural Commodities and Trade Center, scientists here are perfecting a mechanical alternative to hand-picking fresh sweet cherries.

• All that glitters

  Maybe it was the glamor of gold that attracted so much attention to Lai-Sheng Wang after he fathered the gold buckyball, a hollow cluster of gold atoms. Less glamorous, but perhaps more promising, is his subsequent research on more mundane material.

• Taking it to the limit

  When it comes to scientific immortality, not much beats having a fundamental physical relationship named after you. Ask Washington State University physicist Mark Kuzyk, who in 2000 discovered what has become known as the Kuzyk Limit.

• WSU Researchers Decipher Key Step in Legume-Bacterial Symbiosis

  Researchers at Washington State University and in the United Kingdom have announced a discovery that may someday allow the world's farmers to decrease their dependence on nitrogen fertilizers, resulting in billions in savings to farmers and a reduction in the amount of nitrogen pollution that has already turned some waterways into dead zones.

• We all scream for… Creamy taste — without the fat

  Graduate students arrive in Pullman for all sorts of reasons, but Seung-Yong Lim arrived looking for a better tasting lowfat ice cream.

• Global Adjustments Stalking the Waning Asparagus

  In Thomas Friedman’s much-talked-about book, “The World is Flat,” globalization is shown to have an equalizing effect on parts of the world economy through advances in technology. This may lead to unforeseen unfavorable changes in U.S. manufacturing, construction and agriculture. But being forced to change also can be a good thing.

• WSU Physicist First in Northwest to Produce Rare Form of Matter

  Dozens of lenses, mirrors, lasers and vacuum chambers sprawl across two large tables, linked by electrical cables, optical fibers and water lines. Physicist Peter Engels flips switches and adjusts dials. The machine clicks through its procedure, and a minute later a computer screen flares with a pencil-shaped bright patch on a field of gray. “It’s the coldest thing in the universe,” said Engels, nodding toward the bright image.

• WSU Biologist Shows Marine Worms Can Really Take the Heat

  Earth’s most heat-tolerant animals may not live in the tropics or a desert. They likely live at the bottom of the ocean, around hydrothermal vents where magma seeps out of the planet’s interior. Near the vents, molten minerals mix with frigid seawater to create habitats that are home to some of the oddest – and hardiest – organisms known.

• WSU Sweet Cherry Research Integral to Blossoming Industry

  Legend has it that the adolescent George Washington demonstrated his honesty when he confessed to chopping down his father’s lone cherry tree. Today, one of his myriad namesakes, Washington State University, is rectifying the Founding Father’s youthful indiscretion.