Arts & Sciences

The Italian government on July 14 passed an austerity package designed to balance the budget by 2014 and protect Italy from a debt crisis. Will it work? Most likely not, says an economist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Steven Mumm, PhD (left), research associate professor of medicine, works in his lab at the School of Medicine with Adela Cajic, a rising senior at Affton High School and a participant in the Students and Teachers as Research Scientists (STARS) program. STARS pairs academically talented high school juniors and seniors in the St. Louis area with scientists at five research institutions for a six-week apprenticeship in laboratories, including those on the Danforth and Medical campuses.

From the land down under to the top of the world to the dusty streets of Soweto, the Edison Ovations Series presents groundbreaking performances by critically acclaimed artists from around the globe. For its 2011-12 season, Edison will visit modern India (by way of New Zealand) with Guru of Chai, revisit The Sound of Music with Brooklyn Rundfunk Orkestrata and welcome back South Africa’s inspirational Soweto Gospel Choir.  

Washington University in St. Louis will welcome undergraduates from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, this July for the university’s inaugural five-week Fudan at Washington University Summer Program (July 17-Aug. 19). During the program, 28 Fudan students will enroll in two regularly scheduled courses in the College of Arts & Sciences’ Summer School, where they will study alongside their WUSTL counterparts.

For Robert E. Hegel, PhD, the Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature in Arts & Sciences, Chinese language and literature offers ongoing opportunities to explore a fascination he has held since childhood — the universal love of storytelling.

A rare 1950s comic book, titled Negro Romance, that Gerald Early, PhD, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts & Sciences and director of the Center for the Humanities, bought on Ebay is the focus of a mystery in an upcoming episode of PBS’ History Detectives. Early wants to know: Did black artists create this book? Who was the intended audience? Host Gwendolyn Wright gets the answers. The episode will air locally at 8 p.m. Tuesday, July 12, on Nine PBS. It will be repeated at 1 a.m. Thursday, July 14, and 4 p.m. Sunday, July 17. 

Tiffany L. Stanley, most recently a reporter-researcher at The New Republic magazine, has been named managing editor of a forthcoming online journal from the Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. R. Marie Griffith, PhD, the center’s new director and the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, announced Stanley’s appointment, which was effective July 1, 2011.

WUSTL’s University College in Arts & Sciences will host a reception titled “Food For Thought” for prospective students of the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) program at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 4, at Jimmy’s on the Park in Clayton, Mo. The evening’s topic will be “Why Shakespeare Matters.” At the event, prospective students can meet faculty, staff and students from University College and learn about the MLA program.

A ring-shaped laser no bigger than a pinprick can accurately detect and count individual viruses, the particles that jumpstart cloud formation or those that contaminate the air we breathe. A particle disturbs the light circulating in the ring, splitting the lasing frequency. This split is a measure of the particle’s size.

DNA analysis of more than 1300 coconuts from around the world reveals that the coconut was brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. What’s more, coconut genetics also preserve a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.