Arts & Sciences

“The first thing we’re going to do is teach you how to throw a punch,” says senior Melissa Freilich. No, it’s not Boxing 101. Earlier this fall, the Edison Ovations Series welcomed approximately 500 eighth-graders from across St. Louis for a special matinee performance by nationally acclaimed Aquila Theatre.

 Super-TIGER  the WUSTL-led cosmic ray experiment, has just been given the green light for  a third circuit around Antarctica. If the balloon stays up for a complete circuit it will probably break the heavy-lift scientific ballooning record of 42 days — and bring in a rich haul of data about cosmic rays, charged particles that continually bombard the Earth from space. The team has gone positively piratical over the prospect of more booty.

We would all like to believe that there is a kind of karma in life that guarantees those who cheat eventually pay for their bad behavior, if not immediately, then somewhere down the line. But a study of a new gene in the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum suggests that, at least for amoebae, it is possible to cheat and get away with it.

Invisible high-velocity particles rain down on Earth day in and day out, but  it has taken 100 years and clever deduction  for physicists to figure out what they’re made of and where they come from. Although some details are still unclear, physicists have built a case that the cosmic rays are born in volleys of supernova explosions in OB associations, loose associations of hot, massive stars sprinkled throughout our galaxy.

Ah, the Christmas season. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. A time to celebrate peace, love and the religious beliefs of America’s religious majority – whether you like it or not.

Tis the season for perennial battles between true believers and atheists, between mass marketers and the devout souls who worry about blatant commercialization of “the holiday season.”  While it may seem like it’s getting worse then ever, learning more about the facts behind these arguments might help all of us understand one another a bit better, suggest legal and religious history experts at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Super-TIGER comic-ray experiment had a perfect launch Sunday 9:45 am  New Zealand Daylight Time. The enormous balloon that will carry it to the limits of Earth’s atmosphere was stretched out on the ice and then partially filled.  As it came up off the ice, the balloon rose over the downstream instrument. When it was directly overhead the Boss released the  two-ton cosmic-ray instrument and it was lofted effortlessly into the skies over Antarctica.

You Bin Lim celebrates after participating in Washington University’s December Degree Candidate Recognition Ceremony in Graham Chapel Saturday, Dec. 1. Lim, a psychology major with a minor in French, is a candidate for a bachelor of arts degree in the College of Arts & Sciences. She was among some 800  students who filed as December degree candidates.

If Congress and President Obama don’t reach a compromise before the end of the year to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” it will have major consequences on Washington University in St. Louis as well as other universities and colleges across the country, say WUSTL administrators​​.

The word from Antarctica is that the polar vortex is setting up early this year and the balloon-borne Super-TIGER cosmic-ray experiment may be launched into the vortex any day now. Once the launch starts, web cams and a tracking map will go live at NASA’a Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility site Blogs and Twitter feeds are already providing a lively running commentary on the buildup to launch.