Science & Technology

Members of the Washington University in St. Louis community will gather at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15, in the Ginkgo Room of Olin Library to remember Rita Levi-Montalcini, one of two women from the university who won the Nobel Prize. The event, which is hosted by the Woman’s Club of Washington University, is free and open to the public.

Although an irregular heartbeat is a common malady in the United States, affecting an estimated 5 million people, the treatments for it are limited in scope and effectiveness. Now, Igor Efimov, PhD, at Washington University in St. Louis, is studying a new potential treatment that may be much more effective and less painful for patients.

A master’s degree program at Washington University in St. Louis specifically designed for high school science teachers nationwide is helping them learn techniques for inspiring not only the brightest and most motivated science students, but also those with other interests. The two-year program through University College in Arts & Sciences offers teachers online courses during the school year and an on-campus summer institute for three weeks each summer.

This year’s Albert P. and Blanche Y. Greensfelder Lecture will focus on climate change and human health. The lecture will be 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18, in Simon Hall, May Auditorium. The speaker is Howard Frumkin, DrPh, MD, dean and professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health. 

The slow rebound of the bedrock as ice melts can be used to weigh the Antarctic ice sheet. Calibrating rebound will make it possible to measure how much mass the has lost since the ice sheets reached their maximum extent more than 20,000 years ago and how much it is currently losing. Two National Science Foundation grants will fund the installation of seismographs to calibrate crucial parts of the Antarctic ice-weighing machine.

On Saturday, Oct. 19, Jon Kleinberg, the Tisch University Professor at Cornell University, will deliver the American Mathematical Society’s 2013 Einstein Public Lecture in Graham Chapel at Washington University in St. Louis. Kleinberg will discuss “Bursts, Cascades and Hot Spots: A Glimpse of Some Online Social Phenomena at Global Scales.” The talk, which begins at 5 p.m., is free and open to the public.

Legal scholar, author and political activist Lawrence Lessig, JD, is such a popular speaker that it’s challenging to get him for one lecture, so Washington University is doubly fortunate to present an Assembly Series talk by Lessig twice in one day – Thursday, Oct. 10 — on two different subjects.

Scientific discoveries in understanding how body structures change and advance over time are relatively recent and are the result of scientific trailblazers working in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). One of those pioneers, Brian K. Hall, will visit Washington University and give an Assembly Series lecture at 4 p.m. Monday, October 7 in McDonnell Hall Room 162.

In Missouri, about a third of the ponds are infected with chytrid, the notorious skin fungus that has sickened and killed amphibians in other parts of the world. Why only a third, Washington University in St. Louis scientists wondered? A comprehensive study of the the ponds suggests there are hidden constraints on the survival of the fungus. One possibility is that invertebrates present in some ponds but not others allow the fungus to persist by acting as alternative hosts or reservoirs.

The public discussion of global warming can feel very stuck at times. An innovative course at Washington University in St. Louis offers a way forward by making available the efforts of historians to integrate natural history and human history over the past 40 years. Taught by Venus Bivar, PhD, assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences, it is an introduction to a discipline called environmental history, with a special focus on climate change.