Humanities & Society

From the 2000 debate at WUSTL, then Gov. Bush answers a question while V.P. Gore looks on.Washington University is one of 14 sites around the country being considered to host one of the fall 2004 presidential debates, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates.

More than two-dozen scholars and veterans from around the country will remember the United States’ so-called “forgotten war” with “The Coldest War in the Cold War: The Blood and Politics of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953.” The three-day conference, which takes place May 8-10, is sponsored by Washington University’s International Writers Center (IWC) in Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with the Missouri Historical Society. Events will include lectures, film screenings and panel discussions on such topics as the origins and impact of the war, the experience of minority soldiers and the larger framework of the Cold War in America.

Wild African baboons at rest.Investigators from several groups, including Washington University in St. Louis, have found that when it comes to risk of obesity, the food you eat may be less important than the exercise you get. The researchers studied the eating and exercise patterns of two groups of wild baboons in East Africa. Like most primates, one group has to wander and forage for food. The other group lives near a tourist lodge in Kenya; they get lots of their food from the garbage dump. Typically, baboons spend the majority of their day walking from place to place finding food. But the so-called “couch baboons” spent most of their day waiting for food to arrive at the dump and then eating that food. Some of those baboons also became obese and resistant to insulin, just like humans who eat too much and exercise too little.

SadatInternational lawyers, human rights advocates, top government officials and, most recently, the U.S. House of Representatives have urged that Saddam Hussein and other top Iraqi leaders be indicted for the massive atrocities they have committed during the past two decades. Leila Nadya Sadat, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on international war crimes tribunals, notes that the current military action could make effective and legitimate war crimes prosecutions much more difficult.

Entertainment Economics: The Movie Industry,” is the topic of a public forum to be held from 9:30 to 4:45 p.m. April 3 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom, Anheuser-Busch Hall at Washington University in St. Louis.

It’s not too late to pay a visit to a career center.With the slow economy today, the job market in the United States is tough. College seniors graduating this spring with little or no work experience may find it especially difficult to land that first professional job. But even if a graduating senior doesn’t have a resume together or has never been on an interview, it is not too late to pay a visit to a career center, says Lea Luchetti, director of The Career Center at Washington University in St. Louis.

Kenneth R. Seeskin, the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence and Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, will discuss “Can God be Known? A Maimonidean Perplexity” in a lecture 7:30 p.m. April 1 in Room 300, Arts & Sciences Laboratory Science Building at Washington University in St. Louis.

This NASA image shows the smoke from Iraq’s oil fires set early in the confrontation.An air pollution expert at Washington University in St. Louis says the air pollution created by the Iraqi war is regional and should remain that way unless something catastrophic happens such as the torching of the Kuwaiti oil wells in the 1991 Gulf War.

The St. Louis arch has been thought to be a potential target for terrorists.Researchers at Washington University’s Center for Security Technologies are planning a surveillance system that recognizes aberrant traffic flow and then, using automatic target recognition, identifies and analyzes the danger.

Because obesity is a chronic illness, long-term treatment is required to help obese patients make the lifestyle changes to lose weight and keep it off.Almost two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, and that figure is growing — both in size and number. People with medically significant obesity have a body weight that is more than 20 percent above normal. The reason it is called medically significant obesity is that weighing that much puts people at risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and cancer. It also decreases quality of life. Researchers at Washington University’s Weight Management Center help patients lose weight safely and reduce long-term risks of obesity-related diseases by taking a long-term approach. Because obesity is a chronic disease, they believe short-term therapy will not be effective. Just as physicians would not want to treat a diabetic with insulin for four months and then stop the therapy, they say that beating obesity often requires continual care.