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WSU Health Sciences Spokane Extra

WSU medical students’ first – and last – summer break is busy one

Three Medical Students

By Linda Weiford, WSU News

Nick Randall, Ashlyn Jimenez and Erik Stiles recently wrapped up their first year at WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. With the most academically rigorous year of a lifetime behind them, they’re starting the only real summer break they’ll get during medical school.

Even so, they won’t be turning off their brains, watching Netflix or vegging at the beach — nor will their 57 colleagues, all of whom make up the medical school’s inaugural class of students.

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Researcher explores why some people in STEM and medicine fields feel like impostors

researcher Deva ChakravertyHigh-achieving college students may first experience the “impostor phenomenon” when they get to graduate school. They not only find themselves surrounded by other high achievers, but in a program where the measurements of success are unfamiliar and somewhat undefined.

At least that’s some of what faculty researcher Devasmita Chakraverty has found.

“They don’t know exactly when they are going to graduate, or how many papers they have to publish,” Chakraverty said. “They talk about feeling like a tiny fish in a big sea, and how everyone around them is bright and intelligent, making them question if they got there by mistake.” » More …

Meet a Scientist: Dr. Pablo Monsivais Explores Social, Economic Influences on Eating Habits

Dr. Pablo Monsivais at Fresh Basket grocery store

Poor eating habits can cause obesity and increase our risk of developing chronic diseases such as diabetes and stroke.

That much we’ve known, but what scientists are still figuring out is what aspects of our diets affect our health and what factors drive us toward consuming a poor diet in the first place.

The latter is the research focus of Pablo Monsivais, Ph.D., MPH, an associate professor in nutrition and exercise physiology in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. He studies how social and environmental factors influence people’s eating habits, exploring associations between diet and factors such as income level, employment status, and neighborhood access to different types of food outlets. » More …

WSU Spokane student selected for Administrative Summer Internship program at OHSU

Ashley BozetteAshley Bezotte (left), a student in the Health Policy and Administration (HPA) department at WSU Spokane, was one of 15 students accepted into the Administrative Summer Internship Program at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).

Bezotte was one of 200 that applied for 15 spots. She’ll work in the Operations Compliance department at the OHSU clinic.

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Sleeping in Space Showcased at Research Symposium

Many of us have at times had trouble sleeping in the comfort of our own bedrooms, so it’s hard to fathom what it might be like to get sleep on a spacecraft. Those who attended last week’s Inland Northwest Research Symposium at WSU Spokane got a pretty good idea during the keynote lecture presented by scientist Dr. Erin Flynn-Evans.

Flynn-Evans—who leads the Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center—painted a vivid picture of the trials and tribulations of sleeping in space, along with solutions being tested as NASA prepares for manned missions to Mars.

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Meet a Scientist: Dr. Lucia Peixoto’s Work Narrows the Search for Autism Risk Factors

Lucia Peixoto in her lab on the WSU Health Sciences Spokane campus

Lucia Peixoto in her lab on the WSU Health Sciences Spokane campus

A landmark study by scientists at WSU and elsewhere has brought focus to the search for genetic links to autism spectrum disorder, which affects an estimated 2 million Americans. Published in the Jan. 16 issue of Science Signaling, the study identifies more than 2,000 areas of DNA that are active when mice learn a new task and are strongly associated with autism. Taking a closer look at one of those areas, the researchers found a genetic mutation that is associated with increased risk of developing autism.

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WSU Spokane employee leads WSU APAC

Brigitta the chair of Administrative Professional Advisory CouncilLeading an advocacy group trying to represent 2,026 employees is not exactly how Brigitta Jozefowski (pronounced joe-zah-fow-ski) imagined her job when she first started working at Washington State University Spokane back in 2004.

After all, she was “just an hourly staff person” still working on an undergraduate degree she had started years earlier.

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