Humanities & Society

CoburnThink you know your daughter’s potential college roommate for her freshman year? Think again. Not to imply that your daughter will be rooming with an alien being, but as Facebook.com continues to gain popularity, it’s become easier for students to post information that may or may not always be true, which can pose problems for professors, friends and future employers. Students need to remember that a Facebook.com posting becomes public information. And the persona they create online may be hard to maintain once they arrive on campus, says a leading expert on the college experience.

Horse Series by Robert Boston is currently on display on the second floor of the Ferrell Learning and Teaching Center. The photos in the series focus on the world-famous Clydesdale horses at Grant’s Farm.

Steven SmithBy claiming far-reaching and unprecedented executive privilege in its power struggles with the U.S. Congress, the Bush White House has roiled the political waters, forcing both Democrats and Republicans to weigh near-term political consequences of their response against a real and tangible threat to the long-term constitutional powers of Congress, suggests a congressional expert from Washington University in St. Louis.

Connie DiekmanEleven big food companies, including McDonald’s, Pepsi Co. and General Mills, have all agreed to stop advertising products to children under 12 that do not meet certain nutritional requirements. The move is a positive step, says Connie Diekman, director of nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis and current president of the American Dietetic Association.

Gerald EarlyWhile baseball purists may be poised to place a “steroid-fueled” asterisk next to Bond’s name in the record books, to do so would be a mistake, one that follows an unfortunate pattern in the history of blacks in American sports, suggests Gerald Early, Ph.D., a noted essayist and book author who has written extensively on black culture and sports.

Steven SmithWhile members of the U.S. House and Senate are threatening to hold White House officials in contempt of Congress over the administration’s efforts to withhold testimony in an ongoing investigation of the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys, the dispute is likely to fizzle without much of a showdown, suggests a congressional expert from Washington University in St. Louis.

It’s no laughing matter that older adults have a tougher time understanding basic jokes than do younger adults. It’s partially due to a cognitive decline associated with age, according to Washington University in St. Louis researchers Wingyun Mak, a graduate student in psychology in Arts & Sciences, and Brian Carpenter, Ph.D., Washington University associate professor of psychology.

StanleySamuel Stanley, vice chancellor of research, has been named an Ambassador in Research!America’s Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research. Stanley is now one of 50 of the nation’s foremost global health experts who have joined forces to increase awareness about the critical need for greater U.S. public and private investment in research to improve global health.

The School of Law’s American Indian Law and Economic Development Program and the St. Louis law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal have garnered an important legal victory concerning the sovereignty of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. Working with local attorneys in South Dakota, they helped the tribe defend a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of the tribe’s courts to hear a discrimination case brought by tribal members against a non-Indian bank doing business on the reservation. In a twenty-one-page opinion released on June 26, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a 2003 discrimination verdict by a tribal jury awarding nearly a million dollars in damages, interest, and costs to the aggrieved tribal members.

The School of Law’s American Indian Law and Economic Development Program and the St. Louis law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal have garnered an important legal victory concerning the sovereignty of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. Working with local attorneys in South Dakota, they helped the tribe defend a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of the tribe’s courts to hear a discrimination case brought by tribal members against a non-Indian bank doing business on the reservation. In a twenty-one-page opinion released on June 26, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a 2003 discrimination verdict by a tribal jury awarding nearly a million dollars in damages, interest, and costs to the aggrieved tribal members.