Arts & Sciences

Since 1968, the United States has been represented by 28 secretaries of state. But only 25 vocalists have had the chops to call themselves King’s Singers. At 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, the celebrated British ensemble will bring its peerless polyphony to Washington University in St. Louis’s 560 Music Center.

Abram C. Van Engen, PhD, assistant professor of English in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received a 2014 National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship award to do research for a book.

​Class Acts takes a look at John Schmidt, a senior in Arts & Sciences and the white playwright behind this weekend’s Black Anthology. Schmidt also is an editor for Student Life, writer and director for Lunar New Year, a residential advisor and opera singer. Schmidt says his “listening ear” helps him in his various roles. Black Anthology takes place at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 6 and 7.

The Eliot Trio — pianist Seth Carlin, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, violinist David Halen and cellist Bjorn Ranheim, both of the St. Louis Symphony — will play the music of Beethoven, Bruch and Mendelssohn for its annual concert at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, in Holmes Lounge on the Danforth Campus.

A three-dimensional seismic image of the mantle beneath the Lau Basin in the South Pacific just published in Nature has an intriguing anomaly. The image showed the least magma where the scientists expected to find the most. After considerable debate, they concluded that magma with a high water content was flushed so rapidly that it wasn’t showing up in the images.

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research has announced the eight winners of the 2014 University Research Strategic Alliance (URSA) grants. The URSA program aims to encourage new groups of investigators working on new research or using new approaches to solve problems.

Barbara A. Schaal, PhD, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been elected president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. She begins her three-year term as an officer and member of the AAAS Board of Directors’ Executive Committee on Feb. 17.

Cyanobacteria are attractive organisms for the bio-production of fuels, chemicals and drugs but have the drawback that most strains in common use grow slowly. This week scientists at Washington University reported that they have recovered a fast-growing strain of cyanobacteria from a stored culture of a cyanobacterium originally discovered in a creek on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin in 1955.  The new strain grows by 50 percent per hour, the fastest growth rate ever reported for this type of bacteria.

In 1980, Liz Callaway and Jason Graae made their off-Broadway debuts in “Godspell.” Three decades later, the pair are Broadway veterans, each boasting a long and storied career. On Feb. 14, these old friends will reunite at Washington University for “Happily Ever Laughter: A Valentine’s Party.” The special one-night-only performance is presented by the Edison Ovations Series.

Young lovers walking down the aisle may dream of long and healthy lives together, but close friends in the wedding party may have a better sense of whether those wishes will come true, suggests new research on personality and longevity from Washington University in St. Louis.