Arts & Sciences

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the journal Bayesian Analysis, a committee of its former and current editors named a paper by Nan Lin, associate professor of mathematics in Arts & Sciences, and former doctoral student Qing Li “the most promising paper published in the journal in the last five years.”

Five researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are being honored as outstanding scientists by the Academy of Science-St. Louis. University recipients of this year’s honors are faculty members Stephen Beverley, Liviu Mirica, Kater Murch, Edward Spitznagel and Peter Wyse Jackson.

Jeffrey McCune discusses his course “The Politics of Kanye West: Black Genius and Sonic Aesthetics.”

“American Democracy and the Rise of Donald Trump” will be the focus as faculty experts in history, political science, sociology, law, economics and psychology gather for a public symposium from 1-4 p.m. Thursday, March 9, in Room 100 of Brown Hall, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

By growing phytoplankton called coccolithophores in the lab, scientists were able to understand the large biological overprint on the climate signal encoded by their remains, clearing the way for their use as climate proxies.

Robert Sussman, a longtime professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis who died in June 2016, is being honored with the creation of an annual award in his name for scientists making important mid-career contributions to the field of anthropology.

Marylen Mann is the founder of OASIS a nationwide program to help seniors remain active and engaged in their communities even after retirement.

In the last year, dozens of books by university faculty and alumni hit the shelves. Here we share just a small selection of the noteworthy tomes that are making an impact on literature, research and best-seller lists.

Mary Merritt Sale, professor emerita in classics and comparative literature in Arts & Sciences, died under hospice care at her home in Berkeley, Calif., Feb. 8, 2017, from complications of autoimmune disease. She was 87.

Two partial archaic human skulls, from the Lingjing site, Xuchang, central China, provide a new window into the biology and populations patterns of the immediate predecessors of modern humans in eastern Eurasia. Securely dated to about 100,000 years ago, the Xuchang fossils present a mosaic of features.