DADS’ WEEKEND SCHEDULE VARIED
Academic department open houses, car shows, rock ‘n roll concerts, fossil and rock sales, and billiard exhibitions are just of the few of the events scheduled for Dads’ Weekend beginning Friday, Nov. 6. ASWSU’s new climbing gym in the fieldhouse will have its grand opening Saturday at 10 a.m. and an American Institute of Architecture exhibition opens in the Lobby of Carpenter Hall. Kickoff for the Cougar-Cajuns of Southwestern Louisiana is 2 p.m.
Contact: Al Ruddy, News & Information Services
Phone: 509/335-3581
SHOCK DYNAMICS OF APPLES STUDIED BY WSU ENGINEERS
WSU biological systems engineer Gary Hyde says they have established baseline information on the shock dynamics of apples, important in understanding what happens during bruising. He says when the fruit is removed from controlled atmosphere storage, it’s just too juicy and bruises easily. Packers have to be very careful handling apples. Reducing the water content by 1-2 percent could significantly reduce the susceptibility to bruising, says Hyde. Producers aren’t paying much attention, however. Water means weight and weight means dollars. Meanwhile, the sophisticated equipment his laboratory has built for testing the shock dynamics of apples and potatoes is idle, waiting for the industries to recognize the financial potential of the science of dynamic impacting.
Contact: Gary Hyde, Biological Systems Engineering
Phone: 509/335-1636
COUGAR PENNANTS BYE SPECIALTY
Cougar pride is flying everywhere these days in the form of banners, flags and windsocks, thanks to Sherry Bye. The Institutional Review Board coordinator at WSU Spokane has made hundreds of products for WSU departments, friends and colleagues over the past 18 years.
Bye isn’t limited to WSU designs, as she creates banners and flags for Rotary Clubs, high schools and businesses. She says her most rewarding project was two flags for the State of Oregon National Guard Shooting Team that flew at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, N.Y.
Contact: Sherry Bye, WSU Spokane
Phone: 509/358-7631
WSU PROFESSOR EXPLORES THE CAUSES OF STUTTERING
Stuttering is an ancient disorder. For instance, it appears in 4,000-year-old Egyptian hieroglyphics and was described by ancient Greek and Arabian scholars. WSU Professor Emeritus Marcel Wingate has widely influenced research on stuttering by questioning basic beliefs in the field, and he has offered a widely accepted definition of the disorder.
The author of a new book, “Stuttering: A Short History of a Curious Disorder,” Wingate says while it is now widely acknowledged that the cause of stuttering is unknown, devotees of “theories” nonetheless blandly assert their particular belief to be the adequate explanation of the disorder. The most popular constructions of the past fifty years have been built around some version of learning theory. However, in spite of the elaborate verbal structures that have been woven around the assumption that stuttering is “learned behavior,” no palpable evidence exists to support this claim. To the contrary, there is considerable contradictory evidence (which is typically ignored).
Contact: Marcel Wingate, Speech and Hearing Sciences
Phone: 509/335-7528
NEWS AVAILABILITY
Gov. Mike Leavitt of Utah, keynote speaker at WSU Conference on Lifelong Learning and co-founder of the Western Governors University, will be available to reporters at 10 a.m., Wednesday, Nov. 5, in Room 232 of the Compton Union Building.
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