Arts & Sciences

Windows on IranAn Iranian-American scholar at Washington University in St. Louis has been posting daily updates on election-related turmoil in Iran as part of her long-running electronic newsletter on cultural, political and social issues in Iran. Fatemeh Keshavarz, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences, posts news, filled with cell phone videos and firsthand anecdotes from friends and academic contacts within Iran, at Windows on Iran Web site. She is available for media interviews on the day-to-day news reports she’s receiving from contacts within Iran and for broader discussions of the cultural context of these events, including the role of women and the unique ways that this protest is being shaped by the use of cell phones, instant messaging and other online social media.

WUSTL Photo ServicesWUSTL’s ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science CampWashington University in St. Louis will host its third ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp June 14-26. The Danforth Campus will welcome 48 middle schoolers from traditionally underrepresented populations who are academically qualified, recommended by their teachers and genuinely interested in math and science. The free residential camp gives students a first-hand experience with experiments, role models and innovative programs to encourage their continued participation in math and science courses in school. A special “ExxonMobil Media Day” will be held from 9:30-11:30 a.m. June 17 at the Mallinckrodt Center, lower level. Campers will work side by side with scientists to complete an engineering challenge.

Washington University is dismayed and shocked to learn that an attack was made today at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The university has a long-standing commitment to human rights and religious studies, including the Holocaust and Jewish studies, as well as being a sponsor of Holocaust lectures by experts from around the world.

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will begin its 46th season of free Sunday evening performances at 7:30 p.m. July 12 in Brookings Quadrangle with a program celebrating American music.

The Linda Presgrave Quintet will launch Washington University’s summer Jazz at Holmes series Thursday, June 11.

If you’re clueless about petrology, paleobiology and plate tectonics, the National Science Foundation and the Earth Science Literacy Initiative (ESLI) have just released a free pamphlet offering a concise primer on what all Americans should know about the Earth sciences. “The Earth Science Literacy framework document of ‘Big Ideas’ and supporting concepts was a community effort representing the current state-of-the-art research in Earth sciences,” said Michael E. Wysession, Ph.D., chair of ESLI and associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will begin its 46th season of free Sunday-evening performances July 12 with a concert celebrating American music. The program will include orchestral excerpts from Wicked and other popular musicals as well as the Armed Forces Salute, a medley of official songs representing each branch of the armed forces, and The Stars and Stripes Forever. Subsequent concerts, on July 19 and 26, will highlight Vienna’s classical era with music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; and works by “Old World” and “New World” composers, including Bach, Beethoven, Adler and Dvořák.

Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photo The Living Learning Center An opening ceremony for what could be one of North America’s greenest buildings — a flagship building on the cutting edge of sustainable design and energy efficiency — was held May 29 at Washington University in St. Louis’ new Living Learning Center at the university’s Tyson Research Center. The Living Learning Center is a 2,900-square-foot facility built to meet the Living Building Challenge — designed to be the most stringent green building rating system in the world — of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council (CRGBC). No building has met its standard yet, but the Living Learning Center is in the running to be the first in North America.

The Linda Presgrave Quintet will launch Washington University’s summer Jazz at Holmes Series from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday, June 11. The series will feature six free concerts — in a relaxed, coffeehouse-style setting — by professional jazz musicians from around St. Louis and abroad. Presgrave, a pianist and former St. Louisan, lives and performs in New York City, where she recently released In Your Eyes, her debut CD.

A flurry of recent research has documented that talking on a cell phone poses a dangerous distraction for drivers and others whose attention should be focused elsewhere. Now, a new study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology finds that just the ring of a cell phone may be equally distracting, especially when it comes in a classroom setting or includes a familiar song as a ringtone.