Humanities & Society

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.

SherradenThe social work professor who pioneered the idea of Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) — matched savings accounts for low-income Americans — says that President Bush’s new individual savings proposals benefit the wealthy but leave behind the working poor. Michael W. Sherraden, Ph.D., the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, says that President Bush’s proposals to expand individual savings are wise, but fall far short of their potential. Sherraden offers suggestions for making investing opportunities available and profitable to all.

John O. Haley leads the law school’s Whitney Harris Institute.