Arts & Sciences

Recent work with geochemical proxies for oxygen levels suggests that oxygen levels continued to fluctuate long after the Great Oxygenation Event 2.7 billion years ago, and that the oceans were many different flavors of anoxic right up until the Edicaran period, 600 million years ago. What happened in the intervening 2 billion years will be contested until scientists have more data, says a geochemist at Washington University in St. Louis.

In mid-summer two lucky Washington University in St. Louis graduate students got to travel to Lake Constance in Germany to listen in the morning to Nobel laureates lecture on the topics of their choice and quiz them in afternoon about life in science and what it is really like.

Genetic investigators, include Fiona Marshall, PhD, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, say that the partnership between people and the ancestors of today’s donkeys was sealed not by monarchs trying to establish kingdoms, but by mobile, pastoral people who had to recruit animals to help them survive the harsh Saharan landscape in northern Africa more than 5,000 years ago.

Pass the chips and hand over the remote. In a study involving the first-ever daily energy expenditure measurements in apes, a researcher from Washington University in St. Louis and his team have determined that orangutans living in a large indoor/outdoor habitat used less energy, relative to body mass, than nearly any eutherian mammal ever measured, including sedentary humans.

University College students hang a fluorescent light fixture at the North Side Community School in St. Louis July 24 in a service project in conjunction with UCollege’s “Volunteer Resource Management” class. Students painted rooms, assembled furniture and hung boards and light fixtures. University College is holding a preview night for all its programs at 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 12, in Holmes Lounge.

Two doctoral students have received Fulbright-Hays grants to conduct research abroad in the 2010-2011 academic year.

Matthew J. Gabel, PhD, professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, has been awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The award will support his work on judicial decision-making in the European Union.

Many food plants contain cyanogenic glycosides that can release cyanide when the food is eaten. What’s more, a greater proportion of food plants than plants in general are cyanogenic. WUSTL researcher Kenneth M. Olsen, PhD, offers an explanation of this toxic puzzle.

A new Undergraduate Honors Program will be offered beginning this fall semester at University College, the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences. The honors program offers high-achieving students the opportunity to join a learning community dedicated to an exceptionally rigorous but flexible program of study that enables students to work closely with a faculty mentor on an independent project and earn the distinction of Latin honors.

A new bachelor of science in health care will be offered this fall semester at University College, the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences. The degree program, which begins with the start of the semester Aug. 31, provides an academic foundation for students pursuing managerial, clinical or research careers in health care.