Arts & Sciences

Scientists have mostly ignored mRNA, the molecule that ferries information from DNA to the cellular machines that make proteins, because these DNA transcripts are ephemeral and soon destroyed. But mRNA can be just as important as DNA scientists at Washington University in St. Louis say. They found that oxidized messenger RNA jams the cellular machines that make protein. The failure to clear the jams and chew up bad messengers is associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

St. Louis Symphony trombonist Jonathan Reycraft will join the Washington University Wind Ensemble Nov. 20 for a free concert in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. Presented as part of the symphony’s Community Partnership program, the performance will feature music of Bert Appermont, Steven Bryant, Robert Jager and Darius Milhaud.

Harold Blumenfeld, professor emeritus of music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis — and the first composer to devote extensive attention to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud — died Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 91.

Planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have received a $279,639, three-year grant from the NASA Mars Fundamental Research Program for a project that seeks to determine how clay minerals formed on Mars and ways they have been altered since then.

Washington University in St. Louis has been awarded a grant from the Amgen Foundation that will provide hands-on laboratory experience to undergraduate students through the Amgen Scholars Program. This marks the fifth year that Washington University is participating in the program.

Guest conductor André de Quadros will join the Washington University Choirs for “This Too Shall Pass,” a free concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23, at the 560 Music Center. The concert will feature both composed and improvised works, with a special emphasis on the musical practices of Muslim communities.

Making friends is often extremely difficult for people with social anxiety disorder and to make matters worse, people with this disorder tend to assume that the friendships they do have are not of the highest quality. The problem with this perception, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis, is that their friends don’t necessarily see it that way.

Former Army Sgt. Mike Pereira lost a little bit of himself after a friend and fellow veteran shot himself. But Pereira found that, through service, veterans could find purpose, community and healing. Today, he serves dying veterans at hospice and, as a University College student at Washington University in St. Louis, conducts rigorous research about veterans who volunteer in their communities. 

Jacob Solawetz, a sophomore in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, completed a prestigious fellowship during the summer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service in Washington, D.C. Solawetz is double-majoring in economics and mathematics.

While political and judicial rhetoric around unions has softened in recent years, images of the past still haunt labor, argue two Washington University in St. Louis researchers. In “Re-Assembling Labor,” published online Nov. 5 in Social Science Research Network, the authors seek to draw the lessons of assembly into contemporary labor law — to re-assemble labor law around the theory and doctrine of assembly that formed its early core.