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Ancient Africans used ‘no fly zones’ to bring herds south

Isotopic analysis of animal teeth from a 2,000-year-old herding settlement near Lake Victoria in southern Kenya show the area was once home to large grassland corridors — routes that could have been used to dodge tsetse flies and bring domesticated livestock to southern Africa.

Spitznagle named to fistula fund board

Tracy Spitznagle, associate professor of physical therapy and of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named to the board of directors of the Worldwide Fistula Fund.

Agarwal to receive international engineering medal

Ramesh Agarwal, PhD, the William Palm Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, will receive the 2015 Society of Automotive Engineers International Medal of Honor.

Campus & Community

New committee to help shape diversity and inclusion strategy

Building largely on the momentum generated by “Race & Ethnicity: A Day of Discovery and Dialogue,” held Feb. 5 and 6 at Washington University in St. Louis, a newly formed committee has been created to develop a strategy and action plan to help the university become more diverse, inclusive and welcoming.

Campus & Community

University Libraries seeking interviews with Ferguson, North County faculty, staff and contract workers

The Washington University Libraries’ Documenting Ferguson Digital Archive is seeking faculty, staff and contract workers who are living in Ferguson or surrounding communities to share their stories about Ferguson before and after the Aug. 9, 2014, death of Michael Brown Jr. at the hands of a police officer.

Campus & Community

Trustees meet, hear from medical school faculty about advances in cancer research

At the Washington University in St. Louis Board of Trustees meeting Thursday and Friday, March 5 and 6, the trustees heard presentations from School of Medicine faculty about advances in cancer research, treatment and prevention and received a report from Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton that included updates on administrative appointments, admissions, athletics and construction.

Science & Technology

In the quantum world, the future affects the past

In the quantum world, the future predicts the past. Playing a guessing game with a superconducting circuit called a qubit, a physicist at Washington University in St. Louis has discovered a way to narrow the odds of correctly guessing the state of a two-state system. By combining information about the qubit’s evolution after a target time with information about its evolution up to that time, the lab was able to narrow the odds from 50-50 to 90-10.

Rai receives NIH osteoarthritis research grant

M. Farooq Rai, PhD, assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery and an investigator in the laboratory of Linda Sandell, PhD, the Mildred B. Simon Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a five-year, $924,201 Pathway to Independence grant from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Genetic and Molecular Insights Into Cartilage Regeneration, Primary and Post-traumatic Osteoarthritis.”

Arts & Culture

If Mad Max and Dr. Seuss started a band …

The ziggurat drum. The nail violin. The gong array with artillery shells. The chariot of choir. If Mad Max and Dr. Seuss started a band, it might look something like Scrap Arts Music, which comes to Edison March 20 and 21. The Vancouver-based percussion ensemble builds wild, one-of-a-kind instruments from gleaming industrial salvage.

Business & Entrepreneurship

Homeowners fared better in Great Recession than renters, new study finds

While many Americans took a big financial hit during the Great Recession, homeowners were less likely than renters to lose very large proportions of their wealth, finds a new study from Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, associate director of the Center for Social Development in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.