Arts & Sciences

Mounting casualities in America’s nearly 10-year-old wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might seem to serve as a catalyst for people to denounce the war and demand a way out. But a Washington University in St. Louis study into the psychology of “sunk-costs” finds that highlighting casualties before asking for opinions on these wars actually sways people toward a more pro-war attitude. This sunk-cost mindset may also expain why losers stay in the stock market.

A quick glance through history books and today’s news headlines seems to support the idea that humans by nature are aggressive, selfish and antagonistic. But this view simply doesn’t fit with scientific facts, write researchers featured in the new book Origins of Altruism and Cooperation, edited by WUSTL professors Robert W. Sussman, PhD, and C. Robert Cloninger, MD. The book’s authors argue that humans are naturally cooperative, altruistic and social, only reverting to violence when stressed, abused, neglected or mentally ill.

Every day we make thousands of tiny predictions — when the bus will arrive, who is knocking on the door, whether the dropped glass will break. Now, in one of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are beginning to unravel the process by which the brain makes these everyday prognostications.

Phil Valko, a WUSTL alumnus, has been named director of sustainability at Washington University in St. Louis, announced Steven P. Hoffner, associate vice chancellor for operations. The director of sustainability is responsible for providing leadership, vision and strategy to advance WUSTL’s sustainability efforts.

Biologist Alan R. Templeton fell in love with the eastern collared lizard that lives in the hot, dry Ozark glades when he was 13. By the time he returned from  postgraduate work, 75 percent of the lizard populations had vanished. Over the next 30 years, he reintroduced lizards to a few glades and then sought to establish the disturbance regime that had once sustained them by advocating for the highly controversial process of landscape-scale burning. The cover article in the September issue of Ecology celebrates the success of this prolonged effort.

He may not run with scissors, but Mark Nizer is the juggler your mother always warned you about. Buzzing chainsaws, electric carving knives, 16-pound bowling balls, even a flaming propane tank — all are tossed aloft and twirled about with gleeful abandon. On Sept. 17, Nizer will launch Edison’s ovations for young people series with 3-D, his latest draw-dropping one-man show. 

Discussion of the federal debt ceiling has dominated the front page recently. Several Washington University in St. Louis faculty experts, all members of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, have offered their opinions to the news media on the history of the debt ceiling and what may happen if a deal is not reached.

After a yearlong renovation, Cupples II is now home to the College of Arts & Sciences, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the Office of Undergraduate Research, as well as eight state-of-the-art pooled classrooms.

University College — the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis — will host a Preview Night at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 11, in Holmes Lounge in Ridgley Hall on the university’s Danforth Campus. Preview Night will feature speakers who will discuss class and program offerings, admissions requirements and financial aid.

Analysis of new images of a curious “hot spot” on the far side of the Moon reveal it to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma. The unusual location of the province and of the surprising composition of the lava that formed it offer tantalizing clues to the Moon’s thermal history. The discovery has just been published in Nature Geoscience.