Arts & Sciences

That’s using your brain. For the first time in humans, a team headed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains.

WUSTL researchers have found no convincing evidence that people can delay or hasten their own deaths through sheer will.Many of us know stories about terminally ill friends or relatives who were able to battle their illnesses in order to survive until a birthday or other important occasion. In much of medicine, it’s an accepted “truth” that people can hang on or give up and somehow influence the timing of their own deaths. But in reviewing every study on the subject of delaying death, Washington University behavioral medicine researchers have found that there’s no evidence to support the idea that terminally ill people can have an effect on when they die.

Are humans inherently good? The prevailing view in popular and scientific literature is that humans and animals are genetically driven to compete for survival, thus making all social interaction inherently selfish. According to this line of reasoning, known as sociobiology, even seemingly unselfish acts of altruism merely represent a species’ strategy to survive and preserve its genes. But Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., a professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that this is a narrow and simplistic view of evolutionary theory that fails to explain many aspects of sociality among mammals in general and primates in particular. In “The Origins and Nature of Sociality,” a new book Sussman co-edited, he and other researchers challenge the proponents of sociobiology. “The ‘selfish gene’ hypothesis is inadequate,” Sussman says.

Are altruism and morality artificial outgrowths of culture, created by humans to maintain social order? Or is there, instead, a biological foundation to ethical behavior? In other words, are we inherently good? The prevailing view in popular and scientific literature is that humans and animals are genetically driven to compete for survival, thus making all […]

NorthDouglass C. North, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts & Sciences and a co-recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, joined a panel of distinguished economists in Denmark May 24-28th for an intensive forum exploring the costs and benefits of ongoing efforts to address critical global challenges, such as war, famine and disease.

Computer scientist Michael Brent has developed innovative sequencing techniques that will aid in the sequencing of mammals.A computer scientist at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a novel technique to extract more DNA from a single sequence reaction than is normally possible, reducing both cost and time of the sequencing process. Michael R. Brent, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science, has applied software developed in his Washington University laboratory that sorts through the maze of genetic information and finds predicted sequences.

He double-majored, double-minored, maintained a 3.95 GPA and worked several part-time jobs to make ends meet.

Sara L. Johnson, associate dean and academic coordinator in the College of Arts & Sciences, died Monday, May 17, 2004 of metastatic neuroendocrine cancer. She was 47.

Carl Frieden, Jeffrey I. Gordon, John F. McDonnell and Carl Phillips can now stand proudly beside Ben Franklin, George Washington, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. Those four from Washington University in St. Louis have joined those four from history as being elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Photo by Mary ButkusWUSTL science majors volunteer each week to mentor an after-school science club for kids at Webster Middle School in North St. Louis.