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.

The secret lives of the wild asses of the Negev

The Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) disappeared from the Negev, the desert region in southern Israel, in the 1920s. But a remnant herd survived in the Shah of Iran’s zoo. Some of these animals were reintroduced to the desert beginning in 1982. Recently scientists at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and Washington University in St. Louis have been inventing clever new ways to check on the status of these famously elusive animals.

Saturday Science takes a paradoxical turn​​

The popular Saturday Science seminar series celebrates its 20th year by tackling on paradoxes, those fascinating little conundrums that are sometimes just words colliding but other times are cracks in our understanding of the world that, when prised open, give access to a much deeper understanding. The first lecture is Saturday, April 6. ​

Wang to use NSF grant for study of oxygen consumption in cells

Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study oxygen consumption rates of individual cells using photoacoustic microscopy, a novel imaging technology he developed that uses light and sound to measure change.

Kelleher receives Sloan Research Fellowship

Caitlin Kelleher, PhD, has received a prestigious research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Kelleher is the Hugo F. & Ina Champ Urbauer Career Development Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis. The two-year, $50,000 fellowship supports early-career scientists and scholars in science, mathematics, economics and computer science. Fellows may use the funds for equipment, technical assistance, professional travel or trainee support.

When it rains these days, does it pour?

For his undergraduate thesis project, senior Thomas Muschninski working with professor of physics Jonathan Katz published an article in Nature Climate Change showing that the signature of an increase in storminess could be extracted from precipitation data for the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. The scientists suspect the same signature lies hidden under naturally stormier weather at other locations as well.

Walking in the footsteps of 19th- and 20th-century naturalists, scientists find battered plant-pollinator network

Two biologists at Washington University in St. Louis were delighted to discover a meticulous dataset on a plant-pollinator network recorded by Illinois naturalist Charles Robertson between 1884 and 1916. Re-collecting part of Robertson’s network, they learned that although the network has compensated for some losses, battered by climate change and habitat loss it is now weaker and less resilient than in Robertson’s time.
Older Stories