Arts & Sciences

The ArtSci Council honored eight Arts & Sciences faculty for “positively and profoundly” influencing students’ educational experiences during its annual Faculty Awards Recognition Ceremony April 12 in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge.

Whether it’s for money, marbles or chalk, the brains of reward-driven people keep their game faces on, helping them win at every step of the way, even when there is no reward at stake, suggests a surprising Washington University in St. Louis brain scan study published online today by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Most of us return from a business trip with receipts for coffee and perhaps a glass or two of wine. Doug Wiens, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, once came back with receipts for several hundred dollars of kava root.

Western cultural perceptions of the human body will be the focus as the East Asian Studies Program in Arts & Sciences holds a free seminar at 4 p.m. May 4 in Hurst Lounge, Duncker Hall. The event is a prelude to a four-semester seminar program on Japanese views of the body that begins in fall 2010.

The sudden shortage of a nuclear weapons production byproduct that is critical to industries such as nuclear detection, oil and gas, and medical diagnostics was the focus as a House Science and Technology panel heard testimony today from a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

A lecture on “Violence and Social Orders: Where Are We Going” by economics Nobel Laureate Douglass C. North, PhD, the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been rescheduled for 12 noon May 3 in Room L006, Seigle Hall, Danforth Campus, Washington University. 

The Washington University Symphony Orchestra and the Washington University Concert Choir will join forces at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 25, for the 2010 Chancellor’s Concert. The annual performance, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and will highlight the work of French composer Francis Poulenc. 

Richard E. Norberg, PhD, retired professor and longtime chair of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a pioneer in using nuclear magnetic resonance as a practical analysis tool, died April 20, 2010, at Bethesda Dilworth in St. Louis. He was 87.

Arts & Sciences teaching assistants listen as they are recognized for their “exemplary” performance during the annual Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence ceremony, held April 19 in the Danforth University Center. The ceremony, in which 13 graduate students were recognized, coincided with the kickoff of Graduate Education Week in Missouri, April 19-24, as designated by Gov. Jay Nixon.

Frank K. Flinn, Ph.D., adjunct professor of religious studies in Arts & Sciences and author of The Encyclopedia of Catholicism (2007) comments on the damage the pedophilia scandal has caused the church and claims the Vatican’s own laws are responsible.