Arts & Sciences

Picture a menacing drill sergeant, a gory slaughterhouse, a devastating scene of a natural disaster. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found that viewing such emotion-laden images immediately after taking a test actually enhances people’s retention of the tested material.

Missouri in July is hot, hot, hot, but not as hot as Ritmo Caliente, one of St. Louis’ premier Latin jazz-fusion bands. On July 7, Ritmo Caliente will launch Washington University’s annual Jazz in July series with a free performance. Sponsored as part of the larger Jazz at Holmes series, Jazz in July will feature four local ensembles performing Thursday evenings throughout the month in the cool, coffeehouse-style setting of Holmes Lounge. 

WUSTL’s Summer School in Arts & Sciences will present a film series celebrating Frankenstein movies, “It’s Alive! A Celebration of Frankenstein Films,” this June and July. Each film will be introduced by a WUSTL scholar specializing in the genres of cinematic horror and literary monsters. All screenings are free and open to the public.

A team of scientists from Washington University in St. Louis and Monsanto, a St. Louis-based company that makes the glyphosate-based Roundup herbicides, were able to follow molecules of the herbicide as they entered a resistant weed and to discover exactly how the plant disarms it. In a second paper they describe a herbicide application technique that can be used to outfox the resistance mechanism they had discovered.

Howard Benjamin Rudnick, a history and economics major in Arts & Sciences, has been named the winner of the 2011 William Miles Prize at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has appointed new directors for its two largest ensembles. Ward Stare, resident conductor of the St. Louis Symphony, will assume thel role of conductor for the 75-member Washington University Symphony Orchestra. Nicole Aldrich, who recently earned a doctorate in musical arts from the University of Maryland, will become the department’s director of choral activities, conducting the 65-member Washington University Concert Choir. 

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will launch its 48th season of free Sunday-evening concerts July 10 with Various Variations, a program exploring the use of variations by a handful of composers from the Baroque period through the 20th century. Subsequent performances will take place July 17, 24 and 31.

Kevin Moeller, PhD, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is working to find ways to use clean energy in clean chemistry. “We can make the oxidation reactions used in the synthesis of organic molecules cleaner by hitching photovoltaics to electrochemistry,” Moeller says. It’s not a new idea, but one Moeller and his colleagues hope catches on.

The Young Scientist Program (YSP) will mark its 20th anniversary with a day-long symposium at 8:30 a.m. Monday, June 6, at Washington University School of Medicine.

Washington University in St. Louis will host the 2011 North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society June 9-12. The Econometric Society, which has a worldwide membership, is the most prestigious learned society in the field of economics.