Arts & Sciences

David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoBottled water or tap? A WUSTL environmental engineer specializing in aquatic chemistry sees no difference between the two in terms of health.Paying extra for bottled water? You may be wasting your money, says an expert in aquatic chemistry. Daniel Giammar, Ph.D., a faculty member in the Environmental Engineering Science Program at Washington University in St. Louis, says that tap water is just as safe to drink as bottled water. He also says that the pricey bottled water you value so highly might well be nothing more than repackaged tap water. “The tap water we drink meets very strict standards that are designed to protect our health,” Giammar says. “These are developed over many years of study and they all include fairly large factors of safety. Any differences between tap and bottled water, in terms of health, are negligible.”

“Give me a one-armed economist,” President Harry S. Truman once demanded as he vented his frustration over economic advisors who offer straightforward recommendations, then hedge their bets by tacking on a slew of caveats, often beginning with the phrase “but, on the other hand…” Now, Murray Weidenbaum, the chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s first Council of Economic Advisers, has published a compilation of essays that offers the clear, no-nonsense economic policy analysis that Truman craved. Titled One-Armed Economist: On the Intersection of Business and Government, the book provides a distillation of four decades of Weidenbaum’s writings on key public policy issues.

Washington University has a number of internationally recognized experts and researchers on terrorism and homeland security who can address issues including intelligence, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, target identification, and many other areas of concern related to the latest news on threats to the U.S. Faculty associated with the University’s Center for Security Technologies may be of […]

Raven has been appointed to the 12-member President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science by President George W. Bush.

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will conclude its 41st annual season of free summer performances with “Vienna’s Masters,” a concert emphasizing music of composers working in that city, at 7:30 p.m. July 25 in Brookings Quadrangle. The orchestra is conducted by James Richards, professor of music at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The program will open […]

She was awarded the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the Yale University Graduate School’s highest honor, at its commencement ceremonies.

Courtesy photoDouglass North joins a panel of distinguished economists in Denmark for an intensive forum exploring ongoing efforts to address critical global challenges.

It gives public-school teachers an opportunity to re-experience the passion of American history as told through primary sources.

A new study shows spending on federal regulatory agencies exceeds the growth of the overall federal budget. Despite President Bush’s vow to limit discretionary spending to 3.9%, the 2005 Budget requests $39.1 billion in outlays for federal regulatory activities, a 4.2% real increase over the appropriated 2004 budget.

It’s a bug-eat-bug world found in this seemingly innocuous, surprisingly revealing, ecosystem.If you think your place is a dump, try living in a tree hole: a dark flooded crevice with years of accumulated decomposing leaves and bugs, infested with bacteria, other microbes, and crawling with insect larvae. A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has studied the ecosystem of the tree hole and the impact that three factors — predation, resources and disturbance — have on species diversity.