Arts & Sciences

Photo by David Kilper

The Department of English in Arts & Sciences will host a memorial reading in honor of Charles Newman, an acclaimed writer and longtime faculty member, who passed away last March at the age of 67. Speakers will include William H. Gass, Richard “Red” Watson, Margarita Boyers and Robert Boyers.

The fourth week of October will feature an actor, a graphic novelist, and a mathematician.

Eric Woolsey*Fiddler on the Roof*The Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present Fiddler on the Roof, one of Broadway’s most beloved musicals, in Edison Theatre Oct. 27 to Nov. 5. Set in pre-revolutionary Russia, the play tells the story of Tevye, a hardworking milkman who must find suitable husbands for his three eldest daughters. Yet the girls are strong-willed and, breaking with custom, prefer to make their own matches…

The program includes several of his most popular chamber works, including “Cello Sonata in D minor, op. 40”; “Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57”; and two scenes from the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.

Photo by Ray MarklinGreg Polites, M.D., assistant professor and assistant director of the Emergency Medicine Residency Program, shows Ian English (left) and Vikram Sasi, both pre-med students, a head CT scan.Undergraduate biology course gives students a taste of life as an emergency department physician.

Millhauser is the author of 10 novels and story collections, including Martin Dressler, The Tale of an American Dreamer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1997.

William Jay Smith is writing a book about his friendship with classmate Tennessee Williams, the great playwright.

According to a 2005 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report, nursing homes in the United States in 1999 cost an average of $47,000 per year, with costs rising each year. Choosing a course of care for an elderly family member is both a financial decision and an emotional one. A business and economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis is using game theory to understand these long-term care decisions. More…

Photo by David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoNew biomaterials greatly reduce the risk of blood clotting.Biomedical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed new biomaterials to recruit endothelial cells to the inner surfaces of vascular grafts. Endothelial cells normally line blood vessels and actively protect against blood clotting. Blood clotting on artificial materials is currently so severe that the use of vascular grafts is limited to large diameter vessels. A team led by Donald Elbert, Ph. D., Washington University assistant professor of biomedical engineering, synthesized the new materials. More…