Arts & Sciences

The brains of children who suffer clinical depression as preschoolers develop abnormally, compared with the brains of preschoolers unaffected by the disorder, according to university researchers. Their gray matter is lower in volume and thinner in the cortex, a part of the brain important in the processing of emotions.

Biologists have long thought that body size is correlated with temperature zone: larger animals live in colder regions and smaller ones in warmer ones. Newly compiled physiological data allowed this rule to be put to the test. Animals adapt by coordinated changes in their metabolic rates and “insulation.” Body size plays only a minor role.

An outburst from a distant quasar known as PKS 1441+25 in April of this year gave astronomers at the gamma-ray telescope VERITAS an opportunity to measure the density of the optical “fog” that lies between the quasar and Earth and to deduce the surprising separation of the high-energy emission from the black hole that drives it.

Few things are as certain as the end of life, so why is it so hard to talk about? That’s a question that many families will be grappling with over the holidays. And while it’s easy to put off dark discussions during festive times, it’s best to have them sooner than later, says Brian Carpenter, a psychologist who studies family relations in later life at Washington University in St. Louis.

Robert Blankenship, PhD, the Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society’s 2015 Midwest Award.

The Performing Arts Department, in collaboration with The Center of Creative Arts (COCA) — one of the nation’s foremost community arts schools — will launch a new Master of Fine Arts in Dance in fall of 2016.

Karen Tokarz, JD, the Charles Nagel Professor of Public Interest Law & Public Service, director of the Civil Rights & Community Justice Clinic and of the Negotiation & Dispute Resolution Program and professor of African and African-American Studies in Arts & Sciences, and Kimberly Norwood, JD, professor of law and of African and African-American Studies, attended events at the Department of Justice and at the White House on “A Cycle of Incarceration: Prison, Debt, and Bail Practices.”

Five Washington University in St. Louis faculty have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program grants to study abroad during the 2015-16 academic year. They are Petra Levin, PhD (right), Timothy Parsons, PhD; and Guillermo Rosas, PhD, all in Arts & Sciences; Jesse Vogler of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts; and Edythe E. Weeks, JD, PhD, of University College in Arts & Sciences.

Most Americans live within 25 miles of their mothers, according to a study co-authored by an economics researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. The study calls into question a widespread belief that when children grow up, they’re likely to move far away and not be on hand to help out when their mothers get […]

After a nearly 10-year wait, planetary scientist William McKinnon, PhD, provides an inside look at New Horizons’ spectacular flyby of Pluto and its first discoveries coming into focus.