Newsroom Stories

Peter Schäfer, Ph.D., the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University, will present the 2009 Adam Cherrick Lecture in Jewish Studies, “Why Did Baby Messiah Disappear? The Birth of Christianity From the Spirit of Judaism,” at 7 p.m. March 19 in Wilson Hall, room 214.

Washington University in St. Louis will test its Emergency Notification System at noon Monday, March 2. The test will be held in conjunction with St. Louis County’s monthly siren test, which occurs at 11 a.m. on the first Monday of each month.

W.J.T. Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Art History and English at the University of Chicago, will speak on “The Future of the Image” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 2, in the Etta Eiseman Steinberg Auditorium as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ spring lecture series. An award-winning teacher, scholar and theorist of media, art and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology—the study of images across the media.

Courtesy photoW. Robert Binns and TIGER prelaunch in AntarcticaAstrophysicists at Washington University in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3,225,740 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design and build Super-TIGER — a Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder — and then fly it aboard a high-altitude balloon over Antarctica to collect rare atomic particles called galactic cosmic rays. Super-TIGER’s first flight in search of the origin of cosmic rays is planned for December 2012.

Paul Alivisatos shares his pioneering work with nanocrystals to develop medical breakthroughs in biological imaging at the Assembly Series on Wednesday, March 4, at 11 a.m. in Graham Chapel.

I. Jerome Flance, emeritus professor of clinical medicine at the School of Medicine, has received the Ralph O. Claypoole Sr. Memorial Award from the American College of Physicians. The award recognizes an outstanding practitioner of internal medicine who has devoted his or her career to the care of patients.

Phyllis C. Rogier, departmental accountant in the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, died Saturday, Feb. 21, 2009, of a heart attack at her home in St. Louis. She was 55.

Photo by Don DavisRotating black hole: one of nature’s most perfect objectsA physicist at Washington University in St. Louis has found a new twist on a 40-year-old discovery — “the Carter constant” — about the motion of particles in the external field of a rotating black hole. Clifford M. Will, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Professor of Physics in Arts & Sciences, has shown that even in Newton’s gravity, arrangements of masses exist whose gravitational field also admits a Carter-like constant of motion. The finding has implications for gravitational-wave astronomy, he says.

Computer science faculty at Washington University in St. Louis are exposing their undergraduate students to learning in ways that prepare them for interaction in the real work place. It’s not about “staying between the lines,” but more about getting out of your seat, moving around and interacting with your classmates. It’s called active learning, a learning-laboratory- based tutorial teaching concept.

Bon Appétit Management Company, the University’s dining services vendor, will be offering free food samples from local farmers from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Feb. 25 in Room 276 of the Danforth University Center.