Arts & Sciences

Two doctoral students were inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society at the annual Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education March 28 at Yale University. Magassa The 2009 Bouchet Fellows are N’Goundo Magassa, a doctoral student in the Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis Program in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, […]

While public officials aim to establish Missouri as an attractive place for emerging life sciences companies to start, a study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis indicates that high school science proficiency in the state, especially among high-minority and poverty populations, is greatly dependent on having a core group of certified teachers who are highly qualified to teach courses in their content area.

Taking the political pulse of the nation has been the purview of pollsters for decades, but now a new internet site called Civic Science makes it easy for everyone. Software created with the help of a professor at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis allows users to track votes in Congress and compare their views with elected officials across the political spectrum.

Three campus ensembles will join forces April 26 for the 2009 Chancellor’s Concert. The Washington University Jazz Band will open the program with a selection of big band scores. The Washington University Symphony Orchestra will perform music of Leonard Bernstein and Robert Schumann while the Washington University Concert Choir will present a selection of popular opera choruses. To conclude the program, all three ensembles will share the stage for Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

Photo by David KilperPutting a new spin on an old technique, Anne M. Hofmeister, Ph.D., research professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, has revolutionized scientists’ understanding of heat transport in the Earth’s crust, the outermost solid shell of our planet.

As the United States considers major health-care reforms, it may have lessons to learn from Seguro Popular, Mexico’s ambitious plan to improve health care for its estimated 50 million uninsured citizens.

The Eliot Trio will perform music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gabriel Faure and Felix Mendelssohn at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, April 19, in the 560 Music Center’s E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. The Eliot Trio consists of Seth Carlin, professor and director of the piano program in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences; violinist […]

We’ve heard it before: “Imagine yourself passing the exam or scoring a goal and it will happen.” We may roll our eyes and think that’s easier said than done, but a new study from psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis suggests imagination may be more effective than we think in helping us reach our goals. “The imagination has the extraordinary capacity to shape reality,” say co-authors of a study suggesting that merely imagining something close to our hands will cause us to pay more attention to it.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have figured out the orientation of a protein in the antenna complex to its neighboring membrane in a photosynthetic bacterium, a key find in the process of energy transfer in photosynthesis. Robert Blankenship, Ph.D., Markey Distinguished Professor of Biology and Chemistry in Arts & Sciences, led a team that for the first time combined chemical labeling with mass spectroscopy to verify the orientation. The team also included Michael Gross, Ph.D., WUSTL Professor of Chemistry, Immunology and Medicine, and Chemistry graduate students Jianzhong Wen and Hao Zhang. A paper describing this work appeared recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Acting on a strong commitment to social justice forged while students here in the late 1960s, Washington University graduates are giving back to their campus community through the “Birds of Passage” fellowship, which will strengthen University ties with the St. Louis region while providing field experience for socially conscious graduate students.