Listed below are this month’s featured news stories.
• Better memory performance (week of Sept. 6)
• Predicting the spread of cancer (week of Sept. 13)
• Curing diabetes in rats (week of Sept. 20)
• Treating diabetes (week of Sept. 27)
At its annual meeting this summer in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Society for Economic Botany honored Memory Elvin-Lewis, Ph.D., adjunct professor of Microbiology and Ethnobotany at the School of Medicine; and Walter H. Lewis, Ph.D., professor emeritus of biology in Arts & Sciences “in recognition of outstanding achievement, research, and service to the field of economic botany.”
Modern Humans may have been the divergent branch.Could it be that in the great evolutionary “family tree,” it is we Modern Humans, not the brow-ridged, large-nosed Neandertals, who are the odd uncle out? New research published in the August, 2006 journal Current Anthropology by Neandertal and early modern human expert, Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that rather than the standard straight line from chimps to early humans to us with Neandertals off on a side graph, it’s equally valid, perhaps more valid based on the fossil record, that the line should extend from the common ancestor to the Neandertals, and Modern Humans should be the branch off that. More…
In light of two recent cases at Wheaton College in Illinois, Student Health Services is recommending that students review their mumps immunization history to make certain that they have received two doses of MMR vaccine or have had a blood test that indicates mumps immunity.
The Nuremberg trials of major Nazi war criminals spawned the idea of international human rights, but have the principles endured? Leading scholars from Washington University in St. Louis will join former Nuremberg prosecutors and distinguished experts on international criminal justice to examine the legacy of the war trials and their impact on international law, the judicial system and world peace. The conference, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” marks the 60th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials and will take place Sept. 29-Oct. 1 on the Washington University campus.
Temple Grandin transforms our views of how animals and autistic people perceive the world and how they connect. Her Assembly Series talk “The Boundaries of Humanity” is at 11 a.m. on Oct. 4 in Graham Chapel.
Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, BerlinDetail, Albert Oehlen *The Annihilator*The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present [Grid Matrix], the first installment in the new series “Screen Arts and New Media Aesthetics,” Oct. 25 to Dec. 31. The exhibition investigates both ruptures and continuities between these two distinct yet related modes of visual organization, exploring how the grid and the matrix have influenced our understanding of aesthetics, art and media since the early 20th century.
Oren SlorTom Friedman, *There*Play-Doh, spaghetti and aluminum foil — sculptor Tom Friedman transforms mundane consumer products into playful yet meticulously crafted artworks of almost obsessive intricacy. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will inaugurate its new College of Art Gallery with Pure Invention, an exhibition of work by the renowned Washington University alumnus.