Arts & Sciences

The Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus) disappeared from the Negev, the desert region in southern Israel, in the 1920s. But a remnant herd survived in the Shah of Iran’s zoo. Some of these animals were reintroduced to the desert beginning in 1982. Recently scientists at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and Washington University in St. Louis have been inventing clever new ways to check on the status of these famously elusive animals.

As part of its Clinton Global Initiative University efforts, Washington University in St. Louis has announced a major institutional commitment to action around the important issue of sustainability.

Washington University Professor Gerald L. Early, PhD, a noted essayist and American culture critic, will receive a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame in The Loop. An induction ceremony will be at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, April 11, outside the Moonrise Hotel, 6177 Delmar Blvd. His star will be embedded at a later time near the corner of Delmar and Eastgate Avenue after construction is completed on the first phase of WUSTL’s Loop Student Living Initiative.

Mindfulness — paying attention to one’s current experience in a nonjudgmental way — might help us to learn more about our own personalities, new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests.

Playwright Sarah Ruhl, author of the Tony- and Pulitzer-nominated In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), will discuss her work for the Performing Arts Department April 3. The PAD will produce Ruhl’s provocative, critically acclaimed comedy as its spring Mainstage production April 19-28.

The popular Saturday Science seminar series celebrates its 20th year by tackling on paradoxes, those fascinating little conundrums that are sometimes just words colliding but other times are cracks in our understanding of the world that, when prised open, give access to a much deeper understanding. The first lecture is Saturday, April 6. ​

M.J. Warsi, PhD, a well-known linguist and researcher who teacheslinguistics and Indian languages at Washington University in St. Louis,received the Inspirational Leadership Award at an international conference of intellectuals held recently at India International Centre, New Delhi.

About 200 WUSTL students have committed to accomplishing far-reaching projects, and they will showcase their plans at the annual Faces of Hope event on Wednesday, March 27. The event is hosted by the Gephardt Institute for Public Service and this year is focused on student commitments as part of this year’s Clinton Global Initiative University, which will hold its annual meeting on campus in April.​

Buried for 100,000 years at Xujiayao in the Nihewan Basin of northern China, the recovered skull pieces of an early human exhibit a now-rare congenital deformation that indicates inbreeding might well have been common among our ancestors, new research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis suggests.​

Mike Parker Pearson’s research team spent six years on a comprehensive dig in and around Stonehenge, emerging with surprising discoveries and new theories on the origins and purpose of the prehistoric ruins. He will share some of these findings in his Assembly Series lecture, “Stonehenge: New Discoveries” at 4 p.m. Wed., March 27, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium on the Danforth Campus.