Arts & Sciences

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. 

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.

Water and energy is the theme of an Earth Day seminar sponsored by the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering. Paul Bishop, PhD, the Herman Schneider Professor of Environmental Engineering and associate vice president for research at the University of Cincinnati, will deliver the keynote speech “The Water-Energy Nexus” at 11 a.m. Friday, April 23, in Lopata Hall, Room 101.

America’s satisfaction with government is hovering at all time lows according to recent polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center, but don’t assume these sentiments spell doom for the Democratic Party in coming elections, says a congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis.