Arts & Sciences

A new study from the northern Rockies explores the role of fire in the finely tuned dance between plants and their pollinators. The research from biologists including Jonathan Myers in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis is published Nov. 25 in the Journal of Ecology.

Roger Jay Phillips, professor emeritus of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and former director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died Nov. 19 in Longmont, Colo., after suffering from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 80.

Seven faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis are among 489 new fellows selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society.

Jeffrey Zacks’s latest research turns on its head some popular beliefs about memory, showing that a failed prediction isn’t simply a failure, but also a cue which can help people update their understanding — as long as they realize their prediction was wrong.

Research from Washington University in St. Louis helps flesh out the origin story for the so-called “lost crops” of the Midwest and Northeast. These plants that may have fed as many Indigenous people as maize, but until the 1930s had been lost to history. Natalie Mueller, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shares evidence that bison were “co-creators” — along with Indigenous peoples — of landscapes of disturbance that gave rise to greater diversity and more agricultural opportunities.

Two Washington University in St. Louis students and a recent alumnus were finalists for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. 

The American Institute of Architects St. Louis recognized Washington University in St. Louis’ Bryan Hall with a 2020 Merit Award in Architecture. Bryan Hall had at one time housed office and lab space for the McKelvey School of Engineering. It was transformed into additional research space for the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences.

Saori Pastore, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, helps explain what happens in nuclei when they decay, scatter among each other or come into contact with subatomic particles. Her recent paper, “Weak Transitions in Light Nuclei,” published in Frontiers in Physics, contributes to a body of increasingly accurate, descriptive calculations of nuclear structure and reactions.

The 2020 presidential election is over. Joe Biden has won. And yet the clarity and consensus that elections once brought, however grudgingly, now founders on the shores of post-fact partisanship, says Douglas Flowe, assistant professor of history in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The most powerful aspect of the Whitney Museum’s 2018 retrospective ‘David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night’ was not hanging on a wall, but rather was vibrating through the air. In an empty room the artist’s voice consumed all who entered, its crushed granite timbre almost tactile to the ear.