In brief: Library group wins grant for science

SPOKANE COUNTY – The Spokane Public Library Foundation recently received a grant from the Fred Meyer Fund. The $30,000 grant will provide family programming in 2012 that supports education in science.

“Summer Science at the Library and Beyond” will enhance the 2012 summer reading programming with science based presentations at library branches and the West Central Community Center and allow the libraries to make the events more available to working families. Parents will also have an opportunity to check out family science kits that will guide them in at-home science based projects. The libraries will also be able to continue to provide science based “Books for Little Investigators” to preschoolers at daycare centers in Spokane.

Talk to focus on Upper Grand Coulee

CHENEY – Members and Friends of the Ice Age Floods Institute will sponsor a free public lecture tonight at 7 p.m. at Eastern Washington University, on the Cheney Campus, in the Science Building, Room 137.

Patrick Spencer, a professor of geology at Whitman College, will present his lecture, “Latest Pleistocene Geologic History of Upper Grand Coulee,” discussing recent work on fine grained sediment in upper Grand Coulee, including analysis of grain size distribution, sedimentary structures and radiocarbon age dates on key localities, suggesting that some of the sediments accumulated in a calm-water setting, possibly in a lake behind a moraine-dam.

For more information, visit www.iceagefloodsewa.org.