Arts & Sciences

To recognize the creative contributions and exemplary performance of its staff, Arts & Sciences presented eight of its own with the Arts & Sciences 2007-08 Outstanding Staff Award during a recent ceremony and reception in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge. Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., presented the awards May 1 for the last time as dean […]

For the first time, doctoral students on both the Danforth and School of Medicine campuses may apply for subsidies to help defray the cost of child day care.

To recognize the creative contributions and exemplary performance of its staff, Arts & Sciences presented eight of its own with the Arts & Sciences 2007-08 Outstanding Staff Award during a recent ceremony and reception in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge. Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., presented the awards May 1 for the last time as dean of Arts & Sciences. He stepped down June 30 after 14 years in the position.

Four faculty members from the 2008 Callaloo Creative Writing Workshops will read from their poetry and fiction at 7 p.m., Aug. 6 in Duncker Hall, Room 201, Hurst Lounge. The event is free and open to the public.

LowryThe President’s call to end a decades-old ban on offshore oil and gas drilling highlighted key differences in the big-oil platforms of presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential nominees Obama and McCain, suggests William Lowry, a WUSTL expert on the politics of environmental and energy issues.

WooleyAn interdisciplinary team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Karen L. Wooley, Ph.D., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences, is a step closer to delivering cancer-killing drugs to pediatric brain tumors, similar to the tumor that Senator Ted Kennedy is suffering from. Such tumors are often difficult to completely remove surgically; frequently, cancerous cells remain following surgery and the tumor returns. Chemotherapy, while effective at treating tumors, often harms healthy cells as well, leading to severe side effects especially in young children that are still developing their brain functions. In an effort to solve this problem, the Wooley lab has developed polymeric nanoparticles that can entrap doxorubicin, a drug commonly used in chemotherapy, and slowly release the drug over an extended time period.

Image courtesy of Richard AbramsTo see objects better, take matters into your own hands.WUSTL psychologists have shown that to see objects better, you should take the matter into your own hands. Humans are compelled to closely analyze objects near our hands, they suggest, because we have a non-conscious, almost reflexive need to figure out how to handle nearby items or to provide protection against them. Recognizing that the location of your hands influences what you see is a new insight into the wiring of the brain, one that may even offer scientific support for California’s new ban on driving with hand-held cell phones.

Baseball diamonds are a left-hander’s best friend. That’s because the game was designed to make a lefty the “Natural,” according to David A. Peters, Ph.D., the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and über baseball fan. Peters is a mechanical engineer who specializes in aircraft and helicopter engineering and has a different approach to viewing America’s Favorite Pastime.

Image courtesy of Marian BricknerA biologist at Washington University in St. Louis is the mastermind behind a project that has led to an informative book, aimed at children but appealing to all ages, on an endangered species of ape. Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, is the driving force behind I’m Lucy, A Day in the Life of a Young Bonobo, written by Mathea Levine, Goodenough’s daughter, and featuring the photographs of St. Louisan Marian Brickner. The book includes a convincing, impassioned Afterward by the famed primatologist Jane Goodall.

President Bush’s call this week for Congress to end its decades-old ban on offshore oil and gas drilling has highlighted key differences in the big-oil platforms of presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential nominees Barak Obama and John McCain, suggests William Lowry, an expert on the politics of environmental and energy issues at Washington University in St. Louis.