Arts & Sciences

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services*The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek*The 7:10 train rattles through a small rural town battered by the Great Depression. Two teenagers play a dangerous game of “chicken,” racing the 153-ton engine across a narrow railroad bridge. Welcome to The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, a poignant and erotically charged coming-of-age tale by playwright Naomi Wallace, winner of a 1999 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, or “genius grant.” In January the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Rather than being gentle giants, new research reveals that Pleistocene cave bears ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time.Rather than being gentle giants, new research conducted in part by Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, reveals that Pleistocene cave bears ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time: hyaenas, lions, wolves and our own human ancestors.

When complete, China’s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River will cost $25 billion and displace more than 1.4 million people.The Chinese government’s recent decision to scrap controversial plans for a huge dam at Tiger Leaping Gorge on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River represents a milestone for growing grassroots political movements in China, suggests the author of a new book on the politics behind China’s epic dam-building campaign.

It’s been almost 100 years since Oxford University Press published the collected works of Edmund Spenser. An English professor and a team of Arts & Sciences undergraduate and graduate students at Washington University in St. Louis are involved in a major project to publish a new edition for Oxford University Press — which will be complemented by an even more substantial digital archive.

Steven SmithToday’s Iowa Caucuses may be the last in which the largely rural, sparsely populated and predominately white conservative Midwestern state exerts such a huge influence on the presidential nomination process, predicts Steven S. Smith, a political expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Robert BostonAveri Leahy, a junior in the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research Associates’ Program (PEMRAP), talks with Jan D. Luhmann, M.D., assistant professor of pediatrics and a PEMRAP co-director, in the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Emergency Department. Students in the PEMRAP program check the admissions computer for patients who may qualify for clinical studies.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo ServicesThe Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Naomi Wallace’s “The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek,” a poignant and erotically charged coming-of-age tale Jan. 24-27 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre in the Mallinckrodt Student Center.

Helium is drifting away.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. This deflates more than the Goodyear blimp and party favors. Its larger impact is on science and technology, according to Lee Sobotka, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Taking classes with a friend can help adult students stay focused on their schoolwork.So it’s 2008 — the year you decided is the one to start or finish that degree you’ve always intended to earn. But if it’s been awhile since you’ve stepped foot inside a classroom — or at least one that wasn’t your kids’ — here are some suggestions to help you follow through on your New Year’s resolution.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is not only a great loss to Pakistan, but also a great loss to the world says a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis who lived in Pakistan for six months and whose research focuses on Islamic movements in that country and in Afghanistan.