Arts & Sciences

Kastor is editor of *The Louisiana Purchase: Emergence of an American Nation*.The challenges faced by today’s U.S. government officials in Iraq are plentiful. Having ejected the government of Saddam Hussein, U.S. representatives must now spearhead the organization of a new system led by Iraqis to meet the needs of their country’s multi-religious and multi-ethnic population. This effort comes at the bicentennial of America’s first effort to govern foreign peoples. Two hundred years ago — with the end of negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase in Paris on April 30, 1803 — a fledgling U.S. government faced similar circumstances and even greater challenges, according to Peter J. Kastor, Ph.D., assistant professor of history and American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Valencius unearths a common theme among early settlers in *The Health of the Country*.Poring over stacks of yellowed aging letters and other documents from the 19th century while researching American western expansion, Conevery Bolton Valencius, Ph.D., an environmental historian at Washington University in St. Louis, noted a common theme. Assessments of the “sickliness” or “health” of land pervade settlers’ letters, journals, newspapers and literature from that time. Valencius says that the numerous references throughout 19th-century writings to “healthy country,” “sickly” countryside, or “salubrious” valleys reveal the importance settlers placed on the connections between their bodies and their land. One of the main criteria for choosing where to farm and where to raise a family for the early settlers was whether or not the area would be a healthy place to live.

Eighty percent of the United States soybean crop is genetically modified (GM).The clear, cold logic of science is the only approach that can take the hysteria out of the hot debate over genetically modified (GM) crops, says a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis. Barbara Schaal, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, told an international gathering of biotechnology researchers at Washington University that GM crops need more close scrutiny and less fear.

Photo by Andrew Cutraro / Post DispatchApril, 6, 2003 — Embedded Post-Dispatch Journalists Andrew Cutraro, right, and Ron Harris pose after filing stories with the Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines in Salman Pak, Iraq.St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalists Ron Harris and Andy Cutraro worked together as a team of journalists embedded with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, as the unit fought its way from Kuwait to Baghdad in the recent war with Iraq. Their reports and photographs appeared frequently in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Join them as they share stories and photographs about coverage of the war at 7 p.m. May 8 in Brown Hall, Room 100.

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.