Arts & Sciences

“U.S.-China Business Relations” is the focus of a three-day academic symposium that kicks off with a public conference from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. May 11 in Room 311, Anheuser-Busch Hall. U.S.-China commercial relations and intellectual property rights are among topics to be covered.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoMemory Elvin-Lewis in the Goldfarb Greenhouse inspects a kava plant. Elvin-Lewis has written a chapter in a new book that is critical of the unregulated U.S. herbal trade.Ginsengs, echinaceas, and ephedras, oh my! These herbs sound innocuous enough, however, according to Memory Elvin-Lewis, Ph.D., professor of microbiology and ethnobotany in biomedicine in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Americans are unaware of the dangers inherent in these herbal supplements. More…

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoChristine Kirmaier (left) and Dewey Holten making adjustments in their sophisticated laser laboratory. Their findings advance the understanding of photosynthesis.In the famous Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken,” the persona, forced to travel one of two roads, takes the one less traveled by, and “that has made all the difference.” Chemists at Washington University in St. Louis and Stanford University, in kinship with Frost, have modified a key protein in a bacterium to move electrons along a pathway not normally traveled by. They got this to happen 70 percent of the time. That yield “makes all the difference.” More…

Olga Pontes & Craig PikaardThe protein HDA6 shows up as a red stain in this Arabidopsis leaf cell nucleus.A team of researchers, including biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered the key role one protein plays in a major turn-off — in this case, the turning off of thousands of nearly identical genes in a hybrid plant. Studying the phenomenon of nucleolar dominance, in which one parental set of ribosomal genes in a hybrid is silenced, Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and colleagues have identified the protein HDA6 as an important player in the silencing. More…

“When colleagues have professed great satisfaction about being a part of this community, it validates what we are doing,” Chancellor Wrighton said.

He’s on the faculty of Rome’s Santa Cecilia Music Conservatory and is director of the Officina Musicale Dell’Altipiano Delle Rocche.

The Washington University Chamber Choir and the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will present the show at 3 p.m. April 30 in Graham Chapel.

Schaal and Epstein are among 195 men and women elected this year by the academy, an organization formed in 1870 to cultivate the arts and sciences.

The Linguistic Profiling and Linguistic Human Rights conference will be held on campus April 28-29. Sponsored by African and African American Studies in Arts & Sciences and the Ford Foundation, the conference will explore issues surrounding legal considerations of linguistic profiling, fair housing, language restriction on the job and racial, sexual and deaf discrimination, among others.

Warner Bros. Entertainment*Duma*Washington University’s Center for the Humanities and Program in Film and Media Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will host a two-day symposium on Children’s Films and their audiences. Presented in conjunction with Cinema St. Louis, the event will feature a keynote address by Nicholas Sammond, author of Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930-1960 (2005), as well as screenings of the films Duma (2005) and Saving Shiloh (2006), the latter of which was shot in St. Louis last year.