Katims to receive 2013 Stalker Award
Andrew Katims has been selected to be the recipient of
the 2013 Harrison D. Stalker Award given each year by the Department of
Biology. The award is given to the graduating senior in biology
whose undergraduate career was marked by outstanding scientific
scholarship as well as contributions to the university in areas of
artistic expression and/or community service.
Two environmental activists to give sustainability lecture April 10
Two prominent environmental thinkers and activists will address climate change, biodiversity and pollution during a lecture at 7 p.m. April 10 in Whitaker Hall Auditorium at Washington University in St. Louis. The lecture titled “To Hell in a Handbasket?: The Global Environment and Sustainability” is free and open to the public. The primary sponsors are University College — the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences — and the International Affairs program in University College.
Stardust in the laboratory the topic of 2013 McDonnell Distinguished Lecture
Thomas J. Bernatowicz, professor of physics in
Arts & Sciences, will deliver the McDonnell Distinguished Lecture at
7 p.m. Wednesday, April 10, in Room 105, Steinberg Hall, at Washington
University in St. Louis. He will discuss what cosmic dust carried to
Earth by meteorites has revealed about the creation of the elements by
stars and supernovae. The St. Louis community is cordially invited to the lecture, which is sponsored by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.
Incoming provost Thorp named chair of new National Research Council committee
Holden Thorp, who will become WUSTL’s provost in July, has been named chair of a new National Research Council committee tasked with establishing and promoting a culture of safety in academic laboratory research.
Mapping lava tubes in the Galàpagos
Yearly expeditions to explore the lava tubes on
the famed archipelago will culminate in an international symposium to be
held there next year. In the meantime we may all be able to participate as well, if only vicariously. WUSTL’s Aaron Addison, who has traveled to the Galàpagos repeatedly to map the tubes, apppears in a new IMAX film called Galàpagos 3D. Not yet released in the United States, it stars David Attenborough as well as the archipelago’s fantastic geology and biology.
A meteorite mystery
A strange stone found in the Moroccan desert was the talk of the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The stone has highly unusual chemistry, suspiciously like that found by the Messenger space probe, which is currently surveying the surface of Mercury. If it was from Mercury, it would be the first meteorite from that body ever found. The prospects was thrilling but doubts crept in. WUSTL’s Randy Korotev, a lunar meteroite expert, explains the arguments for and against Mercurian origin.
Avoid impulsive acts by imagining future benefits
Why is it so hard for some people to resist the least little temptation, while others seem to possess incredible patience, passing up immediate gratification for a greater long-term good? The answer, suggests a new study from Washington University in St. Louis, is that patient people focus on future rewards in a way that makes the waiting process seem much more pleasurable.
Painted turtle gets DNA decoded
Scientists have decoded the genome of the western painted turtle, one of the most abundant turtles on Earth, finding clues to their longevity and ability to survive without oxygen during long winters spent hibernating in ice-covered ponds.
WUSTL wins 2013 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest College Nationals
A team of four WUSTL students, including sophmores, Grace Kuo and Amy Patterson, shown to left accepting a trophy, won the College Nationals in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest on March 30. Click here for a video of a rolling ball bearing setting off a chain reaction in “Rube Goldberg’s office” that eventually drop a hammer on a nail–the assigned task.
Sussman to outline critical role of culture in understanding society
“The anthropological concept of culture is extremely important and often misunderstood because many of the things that are assumed to be biologically determined, like criminality or homosexuality or IQ, are really behaviorally and societally defined,” says WUSTL physical anthropologist Robert W. Sussman, and it forms the basis for his Phi Beta Kappa/Sigma Xi Lecture, “The Importance of the Concept of Culture
to Science and Society,” the next Assembly Series program held at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 9.
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