Arts & Sciences

Does this recent extreme cold snap spell bad news for mosquitoes and ticks this summer? Not necessarily. Researchers at Tyson Research Center, the environmental field station for Washington University in St. Louis, offer insight into how both insects are surviving the Polar Vortex that has gripped most of the Midwest and eastern United States.

Cindy Brantmeier, professor of applied linguistics and education, has designed a social reading program that employs online games to help adolescent refugees and immigrants. The results are promising — test scores have improved along with student confidence.

Children who have more conflict in relationships with their mothers during early years of elementary school may find it more difficult to find a sense of purpose in life as they reach adulthood, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Black Anthology returns Feb. 1 and 2 to Edison Theatre with its 30th anniversary show, “The Creation,” inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s Harlem Renaissance poem of the same name. Senior Ebby Offord said the show’s staying power reflects the transformative power of art and the persistent challenges that African-American students face.

Monique Williams, AB ’95, MD ’99, MSCI ’08, is a physician with expertise in geriatric medicine and an advocate for including underrepresented populations in medical studies.

Stephen Lockhart, MD, AB ’77, is an avid outdoorsman who makes sure future generations have the opportunity to explore nature.

A book by John Bowen, professor of anthropology and the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received an honorable mention for the 2019 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies.

Purple rice is a whole grain with high levels of antioxidants — and high levels of genetic diversity, thanks to traditional farming practices, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Allegations against R. Kelly have finally exploded into the #MeToo era with Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly.” But the singer’s troubling behavior can be traced back decades. “There was a lot of sexual energy around Kelly that we as young people felt was a little bit dark and a little bit inappropriate and a little bit taboo,” says Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., who studies race, gender and popular culture at Washington University in St. Louis. In the early 1990s, McCune was a student at Kenwood Academy, the Chicago magnet school Kelly had attended just a few years before — and a classmate to one of Kelly’s earliest accusers.

Monique Bedasse, assistant professor of history and of African and African-American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the 2018 Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history.