Humanities & Society

Traditional rice cultivation methods practiced in the isolated hillside farms of Thailand are helping preserve the genetic diversity of rice, one of the world’s most important food crops, according to a new study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

“With President Obama now approaching six months in office, some have suggested that we have gone beyond race as a major dividing line in society. Yet nothing could be further from the truth,” says Mark R. Rank, Ph.D., professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. “One of the fundamental fault lines in American society continues to be the ongoing racial disparities in economic well-being.” Using 30 years of data, Rank examined three key factors in attaining economic well-being: owning a home and building equity; attaining affluence and avoiding poverty; and possessing enough assets to survive economic turmoil, or a “rainy day fund.” “The results indicate that within each area, the economic racial divide across the American life course is immense,” Rank says.

Freshwater fish are an important part of the diet of many peoples around the world, but it has been unclear when fish became an essential part of the year-round diet for early humans. A new study by an international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, shows it may have happened in China as far back as 40,000 years ago.

President Barack Obama met this week with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev. While the two sides did not see eye-to-eye on all topics, they did mutually agree to dispose of 34 tons each of weapons-grade plutonium, an initiative started in the 1990s and never completed. It’s a step in the right direction, says an expert on Russian identity at Washington University in St. Louis.

Alzheimer’s disease researchers at the School of Medicine have won renewal of a grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to study the differences between people who remain mentally spry in the golden years of life and those who develop dementia.

Julie SingerThe shooting death last Saturday of Neda Agha-Soltan has emerged, thanks to video widely circulated on the Internet, as a potent symbol of Iran’s antigovernment movement. In the news media and in private postings across the Web, Agha-Soltan has been memorialized as a victim, a martyr and — perhaps most hauntingly to Western ears — as “Iran’s Joan of Arc.” Yet while fitting in some ways, that comparison says less about either Agha-Soltan or the 15th-century French saint than it does about our own need to make sense of the present through comparison with the past, says Julie Singer, Ph.D., assistant professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has extended funding for the Midwest Regional Center for Excellence in Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (MRCE), anchored at the School of Medicine. The center received a five-year, $37 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to continue to support basic and translational research in biodefense and emerging infectious diseases throughout the Midwest.

Robert Canfield As the Iranian government continues to crack down on citizens protesting against the recent disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an expert on Iran at Washington University in St. Louis says the Iranian administration wants the legitimacy of having won an election without actually having allowed a true election to take place.

The United States has attempted to pass major health reform legislation eight times in the last century, starting in the mid 1910s up through 1993-94 with the failed Clinton health reform effort. “Only once in that period was any legislation passed — in 1964-65 when Medicare and Medicaid were passed,” says Timothy McBride, Ph.D., associate dean of public health at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “Yet, for many reasons, I feel that it is much more likely that legislation will pass this year.” At this point, McBride believes that President Obama has the political support necessary to make health reform happen, and he has made it his top domestic priority. McBride has been active in testifying before Congress and consulting with important policy constituencies on Medicare, insurance and health policy issues. He is a member of the Rural Policy Research Institute Health Panel that provides expert advice on rural health issues to the U.S. Congress and other policymakers.

Windows on IranAn Iranian-American scholar at Washington University in St. Louis has been posting daily updates on election-related turmoil in Iran as part of her long-running electronic newsletter on cultural, political and social issues in Iran. Fatemeh Keshavarz, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences, posts news, filled with cell phone videos and firsthand anecdotes from friends and academic contacts within Iran, at Windows on Iran Web site. She is available for media interviews on the day-to-day news reports she’s receiving from contacts within Iran and for broader discussions of the cultural context of these events, including the role of women and the unique ways that this protest is being shaped by the use of cell phones, instant messaging and other online social media.