Arts & Sciences

An international team of researchers, including Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D. professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has reanalyzed the complete immature dentition of a 30,000 year-old-child from the Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Portugal. The new analysis of the Lagar Velho child shows that these “early modern humans” were modern without being “fully modern.”

Nearly 40 years after the Apollo astronauts first brought samples of the Moon to Earth for study, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis are leading an effort to return to the Moon for samples that could unlock secrets of the early Solar System. Known as MoonRise, the proposed Moon mission is one of three finalists now bidding to become NASA’s next big space science venture, a $650 million mission that would launch before 2019.

NASA’s robotic rover Spirit, bogged down in the loose soil of a Red Planet crater for months, has helped make an important scientific discovery just by spinning its wheels. “We’ve found something supremely interesting in the disturbed soil,” says WUSTL’s Raymond Arvidson, deputy principal scientist on the mission. Sulfate minerals churned up by the rover’s wheels offer evidence that this area “could have once supported life,” he explains.

Having trouble figuring out what to get that high school senior on your gift list this holiday season? Or parents, want to make sure your 17-year-old keeps his or her mind on the right track while on winter break? A book might provide a simple solution. Washington University in St. Louis faculty offer their suggestions for the one book — in a few cases two or three — that a high school senior should read before heading off to college, whether to be better prepared for the college classroom or for living away from home or simply to be a more well-rounded person.

Robert Kranz has devoted much of his caeer to understanding cytochrome c, a little-noted molecule but one as important to life as DNA or hemoglobin. Because bacteria and people use different systems to assemble this molecule, his work may open the door to novel antibiotics and other medicinal drugs.

Four Washington University faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. The rank of fellow is the highest honor awarded by the association and is bestowed upon members by their peers.

John C. Danforth, former U.S. senator, speaks during a Dec. 16 news conference while Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton looks on. The University is establishing a scholarly and educational center that will focus on the role of religion in politics in the United States, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “The establishment of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics reflects the legacy of Jack Danforth and his belief in the importance of a civil discourse that treats differences with respect,” Wrighton said. The creation of the center, which includes the recruitment of five new faculty members with endowed professorships, is being made possible by a $30 million endowment gift from the St. Louis-based Danforth Foundation. It is believed to be the largest gift of its kind made to a university to fund such an academic center.

Heme, a crucial component of the biomachinery that squeezes energy out of food, must be transported across membranes but without exposing its central iron atom to oxidation. Work at Washington University shows how it is done.

Washington University in St. Louis is establishing a scholarly and educational center that will focus on the role of religion in politics in the United States, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. “The establishment of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics reflects the legacy of Jack Danforth and his belief in the importance of a civil discourse that treats differences with respect,” Wrighton said. The creation of the center, which includes the recruitment of five new faculty members with endowed professorships, is being made possible by a $30 million endowment gift from the St. Louis-based Danforth Foundation. It is believed to be the largest gift of its kind made to a university to fund such an academic center.

Washington University Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and former Sen. John C. Danforth, chairman of the Danforth Foundation, will hold a 3 p.m. media briefing Wednesday, Dec. 16, in WUSTL’s Alumni House to discuss a major announcement focused on religion and politics that they are making earlier in the day at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.