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Construction update

In his new position, he will guide an initiative that will focus on ways to expand the intellectual interests and educational skills of undergraduates.

Seismologists record unexpected volcanic eruption on Pacific isle

A levitated droplet during heating by a laser to just above the melting temperature.Using the Electrostatic Levitator at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis led a research team that validated a 50-year-old hypothesis explaining how liquid metals resist turning into solids. The research, led by Ken Kelton, Ph.D., a professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, is featured in the July 2003 issue of Physics Today, including an image on the magazine’s cover of a solid drop of metal suspended inside the levitator. The NASA-funded research challenges theories about how crystals form by a process called nucleation, important in everything from materials to biological systems.”Nucleation is everywhere,” says Kelton. “It’s the major way physical systems change from one phase to another. The better we understand it, the better we can tailor the properties of materials to meet specific needs.”

Using the Electrostatic Levitator at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis led a research team that validated a 50-year-old hypothesis explaining how liquid metals resist turning into solids. The research, led by Ken Kelton, Ph.D., a professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, is featured in the July 2003 issue of Physics Today and includes an image on the magazine’s cover of a solid drop of metal suspended inside the levitator. The NASA-funded research challenges theories about how crystals form by a process called nucleation, important in everything from materials to biological systems.

Smoking is more common among kids with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) than those without the disorder, but the risk for smoking rises dramatically in those with the inattentive subtype of ADHD.Advances in medical imaging techniques are among the breakthroughs being presented by Washington University researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s 50th Annual Meeting June 21-25 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, La. More than 3,600 specialists in the field of nuclear medicine are expected to attend the meeting, which focuses on current issues in nuclear medicine, including bioethics, terrorism using radioactive materials, and controversial topics in the future of PET. WUSTL-related news from the meeting includes research on a new MicroPet technique for improved imaging of small animals and a study suggesting that FDHT-PET scanning of androgen receptors (AR) is successful in imaging patients with prostate cancer. Washington University cancer imaging specialist Barry A. Siegel will receive the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s (SNM) 2003 Georg Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Pioneer Award for his distinguished contributions to nuclear medicine.

David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoEliot Residence Hall during implosionIt took two years to build and mere seconds for it to come down, floor by floor. The last remaining high-rise on Washington University’s South 40, Eliot Residence Hall was demolished just after 10 a.m. Saturday, June 21, to make way for new student housing. As hundreds of Washington University students, faculty, staff, neighbors and alumni — including some who once lived in Eliot — watched, the 12-story, 38-year-old brick structure was imploded, leaving behind a dust cloud that quickly dissipated and a heap of rubble. A new residential hall will be built in the same place and will retain the Eliot name, which honors William Greenleaf Eliot, the university’s co-founder.

WUSTL archivesEilot Residence Hall, 1965Eliot Residence Hall on Washington University’s South 40, the student residential area between Forsyth and Wydown boulevards, will be imploded by Spirtas Wrecking Co. at 10 a.m. June 21 to make way for new student housing. The new residence hall to be built in the same location will retain the Eliot name and comprise 53,500 square feet as part of the Phase II B housing construction on the South 40. The new hall, which will be four stories tall and include 170 beds, will be ready for the fall 2004 semester.

Erik Trinkaus, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, examines a Neandertal skull.New scientific evidence challenges a common perception that Neandertals — a close evolutionary relative to modern humans that lived 230,000 to 30,000 years ago — possessed exceptionally long faces. Instead, a report authored by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that modern humans are really the “odd man out” when it comes to facial lengths, which drop off dramatically compared with their ancestral predecessors.

A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the Harvard School of Public Health and several other clinical centers around the United States has found that treating depression and social isolation in recent heart attack patients does not reduce the risk of death or second heart attack. Results from the Enhancing Recovery in Coronary Heart Disease Patients Study (ENRICHD) are published in the June 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.