Arts & Sciences

In America, helium is running out of gas. The element that lifts things like balloons, spirits and voice ranges is being depleted so rapidly in the world’s largest reserve, outside of Amarillo, Texas, that supplies are expected to be depleted there within the next eight years.

Fatemeh Keshavarz, Ph.D., professor of Persian language and literature and chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages & Literatures in Arts & Sciences, will give the Assembly Series lecture at 11 a.m., Wednesday, Feb. 13, in Graham Chapel.

Image courtesy of NASAThe Earth’s orbital behaviors are responsible for more than just presenting us with a leap year every four years. According to Michael E. Wysession, Ph.D., associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, parameters such as planetary gravitational attractions, the Earth’s elliptical orbit around the sun and the degree of tilt of our planet’s axis with respect to its path around the sun, have implications for climate change and the advent of ice ages.

Preventing Alzheimer’s disease is a goal of Raphael Kopan, Ph.D., professor of molecular biology and pharmacology at the Washington University School of Medicine. The moss plant Physcomitrella patens, studied in the laboratory of Ralph S. Quatrano, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor and chair of the biology department on WUSTL’s Danforth Campus, might inch Kopan toward that goal.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoRobert Blankenship, professor of biology and chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, holds the cyanobacteria *Acaryochloris marina*, a rare bacterium that uses chlorophyll d for photosynthesis.Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Arizona State University have sequenced the genome of a rare bacterium that harvests light energy by making an even rarer form of chlorophyll, chlorophyll d. Chlorophyll d absorbs “red edge,” near infrared, long wave length light that is invisible to the naked eye. In so doing, the cyanobacterium Acaryochloris marina, competes with virtually no other plant or bacterium in the world for sunlight.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services*She Stoops to Conquer*Class, courtship and dysfunctional families all collide in She Stoops to Conquer, the classic 18th century comedy-of-errors by Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. This month, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present a new production of this prototypical “situation comedy” in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

The Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Structural Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis is presenting a series of seminars and workshops on the topic of reducing the damage that would occur when a strong earthquake strikes the New Madrid fault area again.

Fatemeh Keshavarz, Ph.D., professor of Persian language and literature and chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages & Literatures in Arts & Sciences, will give the Assembly Series lecture at 11 a.m., Wednesday, Feb. 13, in Graham Chapel.

Courtesy photoKyôko Koizumi in *Hanging Garden* (2005).Washington University will host free screenings of two recent Japanese films at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 15 and 16. The first, Hanging Garden (2005), explores the quirky soul of a dysfunctional clan struggling to survive amidst the pressures of the modern age. Linda Linda Linda (2005), which will be screened the following evening, traces the trials and triumphs of an all-girl band on the cusp of adulthood.

Author, environmentalist and multimedia artist Janet Kauffman, Ph.D., will read from her work at 8 p.m. Feb. 7 for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. The talk — part of The Writing Program’s spring Reading Series — is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, Room 201, Duncker Hall. […]