Arts & Sciences

More than two-dozen scholars and veterans from around the country will remember the United States’ so-called “forgotten war” with “The Coldest War in the Cold War: The Blood and Politics of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953.” The three-day conference, which takes place May 8-10, is sponsored by Washington University’s International Writers Center (IWC) in Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with the Missouri Historical Society. Events will include lectures, film screenings and panel discussions on such topics as the origins and impact of the war, the experience of minority soldiers and the larger framework of the Cold War in America.

Rebecca Treiman says the “i before e” rule is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to spelling patterns found in the English language.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is tied for 2nd in the nation, according to new graduate and professional rankings released today by U.S. News and World Report magazine. It is the highest ranking in the school’s history. In all, U.S. News has ranked 18 of Washington University’s graduate and professional programs in the top 10 of their respective fields, and 46 graduate and undergraduate programs in their top 25.

Missionaries’ daughter studies ‘bad girls’ of Japanese literature

Wild African baboons at rest.Investigators from several groups, including Washington University in St. Louis, have found that when it comes to risk of obesity, the food you eat may be less important than the exercise you get. The researchers studied the eating and exercise patterns of two groups of wild baboons in East Africa. Like most primates, one group has to wander and forage for food. The other group lives near a tourist lodge in Kenya; they get lots of their food from the garbage dump. Typically, baboons spend the majority of their day walking from place to place finding food. But the so-called “couch baboons” spent most of their day waiting for food to arrive at the dump and then eating that food. Some of those baboons also became obese and resistant to insulin, just like humans who eat too much and exercise too little.

At a formal installation on April 3, Stuart A. Solin, professor of physics, became the inaugural holder of the Charles M. Hohenberg Professorship of Experimental Physics in Arts & Sciences. The ceremony, which was held in Holmes Lounge, featured remarks from Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Chairman of the Board of Trustees John F. McDonnell. Also present to commemorate the occasion was Charles M. Hohenberg, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, who, with his mother, Alice, made the gift to Washington University in memory of his father.

Charles Mee’s *Big Love*Classical drama collides with modern-day excess in Charles Mee’s Big Love, a fiercely extravagant adaptation of Aeschylus’ The Suppliant Maidens that The New York Times describes as “an MGM musical in Technicolor, a circus and, believe it, a Greek tragedy.”

Entertainment Economics: The Movie Industry,” is the topic of a public forum to be held from 9:30 to 4:45 p.m. April 3 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom, Anheuser-Busch Hall at Washington University in St. Louis.

Kenneth R. Seeskin, the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence and Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, will discuss “Can God be Known? A Maimonidean Perplexity” in a lecture 7:30 p.m. April 1 in Room 300, Arts & Sciences Laboratory Science Building at Washington University in St. Louis.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have completed sequencing the genome of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, one of the most prevalent bacteria that live in the human intestine. The results appear in the March 28 issue of the journal Science.