Arts & Sciences

How is it that an insect can remake itself so completely that it appears to be a different creature altogether, not just once, but several times in its lifetime? Working with fruit flies, a team led by Ian and Dianne Duncan of Washington University in St. Louis found that genes whose expression is induced by pulses of steroid hormone are key to these transformations. A similar mechanism may underlie  puberty — the human analog of metamorphosis.

The prevailing model for planetary accretion assumes that the Solar System’s planets formed in an extremely hot, two-dimensional disk of gas and dust, post-dating the Sun. In the March issue of Planetary and Space Science, two scientists at Washington University in St. Louis propose a radically different model, in which collapse takes place in a cold, three-dimensional dust cloud.

Vu Nguyen, who joined the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences last fall as director of winds, will conduct the WUSTL Wind Ensemble in a free concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28, at the 560 Music Center. The performance will feature music by Tielman Susato, Morten Lauridsen, Johann Sebastian Bach, W. Francis McBeth and William Schuman.

Humans today struggle with environmental problems such as a depleted ozone layer and global warming — influences of humans on the environment that put our own existence at risk. But humans altering their environment with disastrous results is nothing new. Just ask archeologist T.R. Kidder, PhD, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, who has spent the past four summers excavating the Han Dynasty village of Sanyangzhuang.

Work at Washington University in St. Louis, just published in EcoHealth, shows that the ecology of fear, like other concepts from predator-prey theory, also extends to parasites. Raccoons and squirrels would give up food, the study demonstrated, if the area was infested with larval ticks. At some level, they are weighing the value of the abandoned food against the risk of being parasitized.

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service invites student groups, centers, departments and schools, as well as individual members of the University community, to join an open discussion about plans for the 2012 election year.  The meeting will be held from 4-5:30 p.m. Monday, March 5, in the Multipurpose Room, lower level of Mallinckrodt Center on the Danforth Campus. ​

“No Boundaries: Women Leaders of Washington University,” an intergenerational discussion group, will be held from 3-4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 6, in Brown Hall Lounge. An RSVP is required by Tuesday, Feb. 28.

It is a harrowing prologue. Teenagers Brooke and Alex, high school sweethearts, panicked by an accidental pregnancy, rent a hotel room to deliver their stillborn child. So opens The Lost Daughter, the sixth and most recent novel by St. Louis native Lucy Ferriss. On Tuesday, March 6, Ferriss, writer-in-residence at Trinity College in Hartford, will read from her work for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Liviu M. Mirica, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a prestigious research fellowship from the Sloan Foundation. Mirica will use the funds to develop novel catalysts that will be able to efficiently convert the greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful chemicals.

Burton M. Wheeler, PhD, professor emeritus of English and of religious studies, both in Arts & Sciences, and a beloved teacher and former dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died Friday, Feb. 17, at his home in Warson Woods, Mo., after a long battle with cancer. He would have turned 85 March 12.