Author: Neil Schoenherr

Erik Trinkaus / Czech Academy of SciencesA 26,000 year-old early modern human showing the reduced strength of the bones of the lesser toes.Those high-tech, air-filled, light-as-a-feather sneakers on your feet are a far cry from the leather slabs our ancestors wore for protection and support. But believe it or not, our modern day Nikes and Reeboks are direct descendents of the first supportive footwear that new research suggests came into use in western Eurasia between 26,000 and 30,000 years ago.

Nine WUSTL police officers have completed the training through a program offered by the St. Louis County government.

Erik Trinkaus helped date human fossils excavated more than 100 years ago from the Mladec Caves in Moravia, Czech Republic.

As part of Service First, they’ll beautify 11 St. Louis Public Schools to make the new school year more enjoyable for students and their teachers.

Teenage soda consumption is on the rise.A new study released by the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls on the Food and Drug Administration to require health warnings on sodas as teenage consumption of sugary drinks continues to rise. Teenage boys who drink carbonated or non-carbonated soft drinks consume an average of three 12-ounce cans per day, and girls more than two cans, according to a new analysis of 1999-2002 government data. Teens who drink soft drinks get nearly 15 percent of their total calories from those drinks. Connie Diekman, a dietary expert at Washington University in St. Louis, has several suggestions for helping to curb teenage soda consumption.

He joins Lee Epstein, Ph.D., professor of political science, and Murray L. Weidenbaum, Ph.D., professor of economics, as the third Mallinckrodt professor in Arts & Sciences.

The grant from Hewlett-Packard was for 21 wireless tablet PCs with docking stations, along with a digital camera, portable projector and printer.

Photo by Mary ButkusDan Kaplan gets nearly a foot of his hair cut off by Josh Nidrols during the recent Locks of Love charity event.

File Photo – David KilperThe class of 2005 has good reason to be happy — overall hiring of college graduates is on the rise.Well, you’ve graduated from college. Congratulations! Now what? Unless you’re off to graduate school, it’s time to get a job. And according to a career expert at Washington University in St. Louis, you’ll probably have a much easier time finding one than students did in the past few years.

Where have you gone, Joe Neandertal?The human fossil evidence from the Mladec Caves in Moravia, Czech Republic, excavated more than 100 years ago, has been proven for the first time, through modern radiocarbon dating, to be the oldest cranial, dental and postcranial assemblage of early modern humans in Europe. A team of researchers from the Natural History Museum in Vienna, from the University of Vienna in Austria and from Washington University in St. Louis recently conducted the first successful direct dating of the material.