Seattle P-I

• Researcher focuses on pine cones of the past
  Andy Bunn will walk through a starkly beautiful landscape in September, where twisted and ancient bristlecone pines grow from a dry, rocky land scoured by high winds and blanketed in snow much of the year.
  
  The Bellingham scientist's aim during those 10 days in Great Basin National Park in Nevada will be to extract small core samplings from as many as 100 trees. The diameter of a pencil, the cores will be taken to his lab at Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment.

KGMI Radio

• WWU professor gets grant to study veterans' health
  A Western Washington University sociology professor is studying the impact of military service on health.
  
  "We're looking at people who served in the '80s and '90s," WWU professor Jay Teachman said. "Now these sort of form a baseline for the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan for a better idea of what military service does."
  
  Teachman has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the National Science Foundation American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
  

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• Bellingham adds five new dog-waste stations designed by WWU students
  In an effort to keep the bad stuff from dogs from polluting streams, City of Bellingham Public Works crews are installing five new dog waste collection stations this week along Railroad Trail. Students in the Industrial Design department at Western Washington University designed the collection stations.
  
  The project was funded by a grant from the Department of Ecology, intended to address high levels of fecal coli form bacteria found in Fever and Whatcom Creeks.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

• Moon walk: A lasting impression
  "It's hard for someone your age to realize the low level of technology in those days," said Pinky Nelson, who grew up in Willmar, Minn., before serving on three space flights as a NASA astronaut. He now teaches science at Western Washington University in Bellingham. "We were still watching black-and-white TVs. There were no portable radios. There were no computers that didn't fill up a room, no hand-held calculators. To pull off a feat like this that required technology so far ahead of where the average citizen was, it was mind-blowing."

The Bellingham Herald

• Grandparents, grandchildren bond through WWU program
  June Hartstra's family roots run deep in Western Washington University's history. Her mother attended Western when it was still the Washington State Normal School, Hartstra graduated from Western in 1952 with a degree in art and a minor in recreational science and Hartstra's son graduated in 1990. This summer, Hartstra, who is 79 and now lives in California, is sharing her love of Western and Bellingham with her grandchildren, Scott Davis, 7, and Claira Davis, 11. The trio are participants in Grandparents U, a program by Western's Extended Education and Summer Programs.
  

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• Officials complain about northern border policy
  Officials from the United States and Canada say that American northern border policy, shaped by terrorism concerns and Mexican border issues, is negatively impacting Pacific Northwest communities.
  
  Donald Alper, a Western Washington University political scientist and director of the Border Policy Research Institute, said his research shows a significant decline in cross-border travel since tighter security measures were imposed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
  
  He also said communities that had developed close cross-border cultures have seen those relationships erode as the U.S. limited access.

Iran Press Watch

• Baha'is and Constructive Resilience
  Following are notes from a talk by Prof. Michael Karlberg given at the Eastside Baha’i Center in Bellevue, Washington, on 27 June 2009, as part of a public program organized in support of the Baha’i prisoners in Iran.  Prof Karlberg teaches at Western Washington University.

Our Sports Central

• Four Slam players named IBL All-Stars
  Four players from the Bellingham Slam were named as International Basketball League all-stars this season, league officials announced. Forward Tyler Amaya and guards Ryan Diggs, Ira Graham and Jacob Stevenson all earned the honor this season.
  
  All four players were standouts at Western Washington. Amaya, Diggs and Graham were members of the Viking squad that made consecutive West Regional Tournament appearances in 2005 and 2006, while Stevenson helped lead WWU to an NCAA-II Elite Eight appearance in 2001.