Arts & Sciences

A team of researchers, including a faculty member and postdoctoral fellow from Washington University, found that oxygen levels appear to increase at about the same time as a three-fold increase in biodiversity during the Ordovician Period, between 445 and 485 million years ago, according to a study published Nov. 20 in Nature Geoscience.

Washington University in St. Louis seniors Camille Borders and Jasmine Brown each have been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, one of the world’s most prestigious academic honors. They were selected Nov. 18 and are among 32 scholars from the United States. Borders and Brown are Ervin Scholars, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and good friends.

Camille Borders, a senior Ervin Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, is among 32 students from across the United States chosen Saturday, Nov. 18, as a Rhodes Scholar. She is the 28th Rhodes Scholar from WashU.

Three Washington University in St. Louis scientists studied the great granddaddy of all photosynthetic organisms — a strain of cyanobacteria — to develop the first experimental map of that organism’s water world.

Christopher Stark, assistant professor of music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected as a 2018 artist-in-residence at USF Bergen. The honor comes amid a year of accomplishments for the composer.

A memorial service for Joe Bonwich, an adjunct instructor in University College in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will be at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 24, at Christ the King Catholic Church, 7316 Balson Ave. in University City, Mo.

First domesticated 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, wheat and barley took vastly different routes to China, with barley switching from a winter to both winter and summer crop during a thousand-year detour along the southern Tibetan Plateau, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

The Washington University Choirs will mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation with a free concert featuring music from the Reformation era alongside songs drawn from more recent protest movements, such as the fights for women’s suffrage and African-American civil rights.

Jennifer M. Hudson, program manager for the Washington University Prison Education Project, discusses the project, its animating philosophy and the importance of the liberal arts.

Can art be separated from its cultural context? In “Kiss,” Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderon explores the power, empathy and sometimes difficult responsibilities of live theater. The Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Calderon’s funny yet searing drama Nov. 16-19.