Arts & Sciences

Your mood at the time might determine whether or not you help this woman.Do you consider yourself a moral person? Most of us do. But what is it exactly that makes us moral beings? A philosopher at Washington University in St. Louis thinks that circumstance and mood often have an extraordinary impact on how people behave, no matter what kind of character they may appear to have. Or, in other words, seemingly Sweet Sally may turn into Selfish Sally if in a foul mood. More …

Fueled by the simplicity of red state-blue state election maps, some pundits have leaped to the conclusion that America is experiencing a landmark shift in traditional political allegiances, with poor, working-class voters leaving the Democratic Party to become “NASCAR Republicans” while wealthier voters join the ranks of an increasingly elite bunch of liberal, limousine-driving “Latte Democrats.” Not so, says the WUSTL co-author of a new study of how income influences state-by-state voting patterns. More …

FieldsDistinguished professor and writer Wayne Fields will present the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities/Phi Beta Kappa/Sigma Xi Lecture for the Assembly Series at 11 a.m. April 12 in Graham Chapel. The talk, on “Love and Seduction: Our Anxiety About Rhetoric,” is free and open to the public.

Photograph of *Spinosaurus* dinosaur bones found in a German museum.A geologist at Washington University has confirmed the discovery of a geologist from another era by discovering presumably lost photographs in a German museum. The finding is important to the history of paleontology. More…

Unraveling the mysteries of the human brain, and the mind it gives rise to, is within the reach of modern science, suggests a forthcoming issue of the journal Neuroscience. The special issue explores how sophisticated working memory processes — from the firing of a single neuron to the activation of multiple brain regions — help shape our understanding of the world, says issue co-editor Grega Repovs, a visiting post-doctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. More…

<img src="/news/PublishingImages/4048_t.jpg" alt="Pretty fly — for a fruit fly. The areas stained blue are regions in the fruit fly where the spineless gene is expressed.” height=”211″ width=”150″ />Pretty fly – for a fruit fly. The areas stained blue are regions in the fruit fly where the spineless gene is expressed.A team of researchers that includes biologists from Washington University in St. Louis has discovered that a gene involved in the development and function of the fruit fly antenna also gives the organism its color vision. Claude Desplan, Ph.D., professor of biology at New York University, and his students made the discovery and provided the data. Ian Duncan, Washington University professor of biology, and his wife, research assistant Dianne Duncan, provided the Desplan laboratory fruit fly (Drosophila) clones and mutants and technical assistance that helped locate where the gene, called spineless, is expressed in the retina. More…

Current levels of defense spending represent less than 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), says Murray Weidenbaum, the Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He says that the cost of today’s war pales in comparison to military outlays of about 35 percent of GDP at the peak of World War II; 15 percent of GDP for the Korean War; 10 percent for Vietnam and 6 percent for the Gulf War. More…

Jon Cook, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will speak on the craft of poetry at 8 p.m., Thursday, April 13. Cook is the author of Romanticism and Ideology (1981), William Hazlitt: Selected Writings (1991), Poetry in Theory (2004) and the forthcoming Hazlitt in Love.

“Da police are not here to create disorder; dere here to preserve disorder.” — Richard J. Daley, Chicago mayor, explaining to the media the role of the police during the riotous 1968 Democratic National Convention. David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoThe order team.Police keep order. That’s why, for example, they issue tickets for “disturbing the peace.” Thus the only logical conclusion to Mayor Daley’s famous quote above — other than dismissing it as the result of a tangled tongue — is sometimes disorder spawns order. Sounds impossible, right? Wrong. According to a computational study conducted by a group of physicists at Washington University in St. Louis, one may create order by introducing disorder. More…

Four women who hold influential public service leadership positions on the St. Louis area will offer career advice as part of a free public panel discussion on “Women in Public Service” at 4 p.m. April 19 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom. Panelists include Catherine Hanaway, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri; Jennifer Joyce, Circuit Attorney City of St. Louis; Emmy McClelland, Director of Governmental Affairs at St. Louis Children’s Hospital; and Darlene Green, City of St. Louis Comptroller.