Humanities & Society

Photo by David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoErik Herzog, Ph.D., and graduate student Rachel Huckfeldt attach electrodes to a multielectrode array.Getting over jet lag may be as simple as changing the temperature —your brain temperature, that is. That’s a theory proposed by Erik Herzog, Ph.D. assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Herzog has found that the biological clocks of rats and mice respond directly to temperature changes.

O’SullivanAn electrical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has devised a theory that sets the limits for the amount of data that can be hidden in a system and then provides guidelines for how to store data and decode it. Contrarily, the theory also provides guidelines for how an adversary would disrupt the hidden information. The theory will have a major impact on homeland security applications.

Experimental economics — a fast-growing branch of economics that involves the creation of a microeconomic environment in a laboratory — is being widely used at the John M. Olin School of Business. Applications of the experimental research have multiplied, spanning many industries and producing results that have impacted everything from how airlines price their tickets to how companies manage their employees. Ronald R. King, Ph.D., is helping to lead the burgeoning new area of research at the business school.

Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, examines a Neandertal skull.New scientific evidence challenges a common perception that Neandertals — a close evolutionary relative to modern humans that lived 230,000 to 30,000 years ago — possessed exceptionally long faces. Instead, a report authored by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that modern humans are really the “odd man out” when it comes to facial lengths, which drop off dramatically compared with their ancestral predecessors.

A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the Harvard School of Public Health and several other clinical centers around the United States has found that treating depression and social isolation in recent heart attack patients does not reduce the risk of death or second heart attack. Results from the Enhancing Recovery in Coronary Heart Disease Patients Study (ENRICHD) are published in the June 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Nationally speaking, high school-level courses in graphic design, as opposed to general art or special projects such as yearbooks or student newspapers, are surprisingly rare. So when venerable University City High School, 7401 Balson Ave., launched a new graphics class last year, a group of visual communications majors from Washington University’s School of Art readily agreed to help tutor students in the fledgling program.

MoretonThe Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted June 2 on the most significant overhaul of media ownership rules in decades, including a change that allows television networks to own more local stations. The new rule loosens the national television network ownership cap — raising the number of viewers the networks can reach to 45 percent from 35 percent of the nation’s viewers. Patrick Moreton, Ph.D., a professor of organization and strategy at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, says that the changes are in a very real sense, a “catch-up exercise,” forced on it by changes in the technology used to produce and deliver entertainment and news.

Photo by Joe AngelesWith Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton at her side, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Ph.D., outlines her views on global policy issues.The United States could suffer long-term consequences if it is not careful about how it uses its strength, former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said Friday at Washington University in St. Louis. “The extent of American power has created an opportunity for us to make our nation more secure within a world that is healthier, richer and more peaceful than it has ever been,” Albright said. “But if we are not prudent in exercising that power, we will create resentments that will make it much harder in the long run to achieve our goals.”

FergusonRoger W. Ferguson, Jr., Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, gave the commencement address to M.B.A. and Ph.D. graduates of the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis on May 16. Dr. Ferguson became a Member of the Board of Governors in 1997 to fill an unexpired term and was reappointed in 2001 to a full term ending in 2014. The complete text of his commencement address to the Olin School of Business is available from the Federal Reserve System.

Genetic factors influence nicotine withdrawal symptoms and make it difficult for some smokers to quit.Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have uncovered evidence linking genetic influences to nicotine withdrawal symptoms that commonly occur when a smoker attempts to quit. Their findings also indicate that genetic factors both related and unrelated to nicotine withdrawal may affect attempts to quit smoking. The team, led by Hong Xian, Ph.D., research assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and researcher at the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, found that genetic influences accounted for 54 percent of failures to quit smoking, and that about one-third of such failures could be attributed to the severity of nicotine withdrawal symptoms.