Arts & Sciences

Roberta Freund Schwartz, assistant professor of historical musicology at the University of Kansas, will present a lecture titled “An Investigation into the Late Renaissance episteme Embodied in the Musical Writings of Joachim Burmeister and the Motets of Orlando di Lasso” at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27.

Tenor Joseph Michels, a master’s candidate in vocal performance in Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, will present a voice recital at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, in the university’s Graham Chapel.

Pianist James Prell will join the Washington University Symphony Orchestra for a performance at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22, in University’s Graham Chapel.

DaviesFiction Writer Peter Ho Davies will present a pair of events Feb. 26 and March 4.

LeeHelie Lee, author of the national bestselling memoirs Still Life with Rice (1996) and In the Absence of Sun (2002), will host a pair of events Feb. 23-24 for The SmartSet Series: Where Great Writers Read, sponsored by Washington University’s Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences.

Photograph © Douglas M. Parker StudioJean-Michel Basquiat *Horn Players* 1983 Acrylic and oil paintstick on three canvas panels, 96 x 75Works by contemporary composers John Adams, Emma Diemer, William Bolcom and saxophonist Anders Lundegaard will highlight a concert of American Music of the 1980s at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20, at the Washington University Gallery of Art.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoBruce Fegley, Jr. and Laura Schaefer, with a chunk of galena, or lead sulfide.Lead sulfide — also known by its mineral name, galena — is a naturally occurring mineral found in Missouri, other parts of the world, and now. . .other parts of the solar system. Because recent thermodynamic calculations by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis provide plausible evidence that “heavy metal snow,” which blankets the surface of upper altitude Venusian rocks, is composed of both lead and bismuth sulfides.

A graduate student in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has combed the dinosaur fossil record from T. Rex to songbirds and has compiled the first quantitative analysis of the quality and congruence of that record.

A biography of St. Patrick is due out just in time for March 17.St. Patrick’s Day has become an excuse for Americans of all ethnic backgrounds to break out the green and head to their local parade or pub and imbibe in Irish beer and corned beef and cabbage. And just in time for this year’s celebration of St. Patrick’s feast day comes a book that will have many — even the true Irish — saying, “I didn’t know that” about Ireland’s beloved patron saint. Many of the stories about St. Patrick that have been passed down for generations, including the one about him ridding Ireland of its snakes, are false, says an expert in Celtic and classical studies at Washington University in St. Louis in a book being released in early March.

Photo by Joe Angeles / WUSTL PhotoThe Truster hand-held “Emotion Reader.”Voice-stress analysis, an alternative to the polygraph as a method for lie detection, is already widely used in police and insurance fraud investigations. Now, however, it is being touted as a powerful and effective tool for an array of new applications — everything from screening potential terrorists in the nation’s airports to catching wayward spouses in messy marital disputes. Despite its booming popularity, recent federally sponsored studies have found little evidence that existing voice-stress technologies are capable of consistently detecting lies and deceptions. “You could have gotten better results by flipping a coin,” says Washington University in St. Louis psychologist Mitchell S. Sommers, lead investigator on a recent voice-stress study.