Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have traced the paths of three water channels in an ancient photosynthetic organism to provide the first comprehensive, experimental study of how that organism uses and regulates water to create energy.

Photosynthesis is the chemical conversion of sunlight into chemical energy via an electron transport chain essential to nearly all life on our planet. All plants operate by photosynthesis, as do algae and certain varieties of bacteria.

Daniel A. Weisz, a post-doctoral researcher in biology in Arts & Sciences, was lead author of the study that looked at the great granddaddy of all photosynthetic organisms — a strain of cyanobacteria — to develop the first experimental map of that organism’s water world.

Co-authors on the study were Michael L. Gross, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, and Himadri B. Pakrasi, the Myron and Sonya Glassberg/Albert and Blanche Greensfelder Distinguished University Professor and director of the International Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. They were Weisz’s doctoral co-advisers.

The finding advances photosynthesis research but also presents an advance in green fuels research.

To convert sunlight into a usable form of energy, photosynthetic organisms require water at the “active site” of the Photosystem II protein complex. But the channels through which water arrives at the active site are difficult to measure experimentally. Reactive oxygen species are produced at the active site and travel away from it, in the opposite direction as water, leaving a “damage trail” in their wake.

“We identified the damaged sites in Photosystem II using high-resolution mass spectrometry and found that they reveal several pathways centered on the active site and leading away from it all the way to the surface of the complex,” Weisz said. “We propose that these pathways represent channels within the complex that could be used to deliver water to the active site.”

The study appears in the Nov. 17 issue of Science Advances.

“Photosystem II has a very complex mechanism, and it’s really important to understand its processes and evolution,” said Pakrasi, who has researched cyanobacteria extensively for more than 25 years. “There is a growing interest in green energy, and our knowledge of this enzyme’s behavior could someday be put to use to create an artificial system that mimics the real enzyme to produce an abundant amount of sustainable energy.”

The active site of Photosystem II is a cluster of manganese, calcium and oxygen ions buried deep within the complex, far away from the watery medium of the cell. Researchers have long speculated that the active site, or manganese cluster, must have a channel system, and theoretical, supercomputer-generated models tenuously have predicted their existence. But water motion is hard to characterize experimentally.

The researchers took a roundabout path to delineate the channels. The “damage trail” comprises 36 amino acid residues from essentially three proteins found near the manganese cluster by a highly sophisticated mass spectrometer. The instrument is part of the Mass Spectrometry Research Resource directed by Gross, who is also a professor of immunology and pathology and of medicine in the School of Medicine.

The “damage trail” is similar to that caused in a protein footprinting approach developed by Gross where proteins are purposefully modified by free radicals to map out solvent exposure. In this study, the modifications take place naturally where the protein is exposed to water solvent.

These damaging reactive oxygen species, also known as radicals, emanate and disperse from the cluster outward toward the cell’s watery medium. The radicals pass through Photosystem II like a tornado, attacking and damaging the nearest amino acid components of Photosystem II that they encounter along their path.

Because the radicals and water have similar properties, such as size and hydrophilicity, the researchers propose that the damage trail pathways going out from the cluster are very similar to the paths that water takes inward toward the active site.

“We’re directly observing the paths that the radicals take, not those of water,” Weisz said. “But given the radicals’ similar properties to water as well as previous computer modeling results, we believe that those pathways are the same ones that water takes inward.”

Such an approach to discovering the water channels is considered a proxy because it’s based on the movement of the highly reactive radicals and not of the water itself.

The proxy, Weisz said, “is like leaving a trail of bread crumbs along a path in the forest. If someone is able to find the bread crumbs, they can retrace the path taken out of the forest.”

The researchers were able to identify the many damaged residues because of the incredible accuracy, speed and sensitivity of Gross’ mass spectrometry instrument. “With earlier instruments that were slower and less sensitive, it was harder to confidently identify large numbers of damaged sites,” Weisz said. “The powerful capabilities of this instrument enabled us to obtain these results.”

“Cyanobacteria are the progenitors of chloroplasts in plants,” Pakrasi said. “Photosystem II is conserved across all oxygenic photosynthetic organisms. We know for sure that nature devised this machine only once, then transferred it from cyanobacteria to algae and to plants.”

The study was supported by grant DE-FG02-99ER20350 from the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); DE-SC 0001035 from the Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences; and 2P41GM103422 from the National Institutes of Health.

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Camille (Mimi) Borders, a senior in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is among 32 students from across the United States chosen Saturday, Nov. 18, as a Rhodes Scholar.

One of the world’s most prestigious academic awards, Rhodes Scholarships provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England. Borders, 21, intends to earn a master of philosophy degree in social and economic history, studying the global slave trade and the factors that led to its eventual demise.

Borders is the 28^th Rhodes Scholar from Washington University. Her family resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Academia and activism

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Borders arrived as an Ervin Scholar at Washington University in August 2014, shortly after the shooting death of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Mo. She quickly became active in campus and community protests, and active in creating the group Washington University Students in Solidarity, to facilitate race-relations dialogues and institutional change on campus.

A defining moment occurred that fall, when Borders and many others “were tear-gassed while peacefully protesting in front of the Ferguson Police Department,” Borders remembered. “As I ran in a foggy haze, among the cacophony of sirens and screams, my breath jagged and eyes watering, I decided my life would be dedicated to promoting racial equality.”

Amidst these tumultuous events, Borders discovered a scholarly home in her history classes, which helped her to explore the roots of contemporary unrest. “Organically, my activism grew intertwined with my interest in academia and research,” she said. “My love for knowledge and intellectualism is inherently tangled with my desire for equality.”

The following year, Borders was selected as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and served as research assistant for the oral history project “Documenting Ferguson.” In 2016, she researched the Trans-Atlantic slave trade at the University of Bristol as part of the Fulbright Summer Institute, and, in 2017, she spent six months at the University of Ghana, studying history and creative writing.

She currently is working on her senior honors thesis, “The Possibility of Desire: Sexual Choice within U.S. Colored Troops Widows’ Pensions.” The thesis explores how, after the Civil War, newly freed black women navigated issues of citizenship and intimacy.

‘A force of nature’

“Mimi is an intellectual force of nature,” said her advisor, Iver Bernstein, professor of history and director of American Culture Studies in Arts & Sciences. “She combines interpretive originality with laser-like attention to both the particulars of everyday life and to the big questions of American political history. What does it mean to have a self, to be a citizen, to be free?”

Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies, called Borders “a born scholar of the best kind.

“She is rigorous, ambitious, creative, intelligent — a focused, independent thinker of great humility and integrity,” McCune added. “Her work connects theory and history in a mature and masterful way.”

Borders’ friend Jasmine Brown, a fellow Ervin Scholar and fellow member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, also was selected as a Rhodes Scholar, making her the university’s 29th. A biology major in Arts & Sciences, Brown is a research assistant at Washington University School of Medicine, where she has uncovered the molecular pathways West Nile and Zika viruses travel to infect the brain. Read more about Brown here.

To learn more about the Rhodes Scholarship, visit rhodesscholar.org.

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Washington University in St. Louis seniors Camille Borders and Jasmine Brown have been selected as Rhodes Scholars. One of the most world’s most prestigious academic honors, the scholarship provides an opportunity to earn an advanced degree at Oxford University. Borders and Brown were among 32 students selected from across the nation on Nov. 18.  

Borders and Brown are Ervin Scholars, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and good friends. 

“It’s been amazing to go through this process with someone who has been such a good friend and such an inspiration,” Brown said. “I can’t believe we are going to do this together. Sharing this experience is an amazing blessing.”

“I have known Jasmine since freshman year,” Borders said. “As Ervin Scholars, we have grown together. Also, as members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., we have developed a lifeline sisterhood sustained by service and scholarship. I am so ecstatic to win this amazing honor with a brilliantly intelligent and motivated young woman, who I can call a friend and a sister.”

Brown and Borders represent the 28th and 29th Rhodes Scholars selected from Washington University over the years. The last time two students associated with the university were selected was in 2006 when Leana Wen, a student at the Washington University School of Medicine, and Aaron Mertz, 22, a 2006 alumnus, were named scholars.

Brown, 21, is majoring in biology and intends to earn a PhD in neuroscience at Oxford University while continuing her efforts to fight implicit bias against minority students in academia and the lab. She hails from Hillsborough, N.J.

Borders, 21, is majoring in history and plans to pursue a master of philosophy degree in social and economic history, studying the global slave trade and the factors that led to its eventual demise. She was raised in Cincinnati. 

“We are extraordinarily proud to have not just one, but two Washington University students honored as Rhodes Scholars,” Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said. “I am ecstatic for Camille and Jasmine. This is one of the highest honors our students can receive, and I could not be more pleased that the Rhodes Scholar selection committee has recognized their many gifts and accomplishments with this prestigious award. I have no doubt they both will continue to shine as they share their talents with the world as Rhodes Scholars.”

An ‘uncommon mind’

Brown has distinguished herself as a researcher who effortlessly segues from one vexing medical challenge to another. Currently, she is a research assistant at the Washington University School of Medicine, where she is working to uncover the molecular pathways that West Nile and Zika viruses travel to infect the brain.

Previously, she studied lung cancer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, tested the antitussive effects of specific drugs at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and analyzed the long-term neurological effects of cocaine and other stimulants on the adolescent brain at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She also is a participant in the MARC U-STAR program, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

“I have a lot of questions,” Brown said. “What I love about science is that it gives me the tools to generate answers and to improve human health. It’s a fun process for me, but also a satisfying one because I can make an impact.”

James B. Skeath, professor of genetics at the School of Medicine, called Brown the total package — a good person and a good scientist who is smart, hardworking, curious and creative.

“In her talks, Jasmine sets up the logic and rationale of her work beautifully and then clearly articulates her data, what it means, why it’s significant and what to do next,” Skeath said. “This ability to make the complex simple, to break down complicated biological processes and problems into easily digestible and understandable points, only manifests itself in top students. It reflects an uncommon mind and a depth and breadth of understanding that only a few can obtain.”

Brown has learned some tough lessons in the lab as well. When a researcher hesitated to let Brown into her lab, Brown realized she was the sole black scientist in the building.

“Unfortunately, I soon learned that many other students of color have had similar encounters, leading many to experience imposter syndrome, questioning if they truly belong in the research community,” Brown wrote in her Rhodes application.

She decided to start the group Minority Association of Rising Scientists (MARS) to support underrepresented students and to educate faculty members about implicit bias. She has been working with the National Science Foundation to expand the program across the nation.  

“If we want to advance science, we need people from different backgrounds who think in different ways,” Brown said.

MARS is inspired, in part, by Brown’s experience as both a Rodriguez and an Ervin scholar at Washington University.

“The nurture and support I got from those programs is something I want MARS to provide to minority scientists,” Brown said. “Those programs, as well as the professors I’ve connected with at WashU, made me realize I am not disempowered and that I could extend that network of support to other people who don’t have that community.”

Brown also has served as a member of Synapse, which prepares high school students for the Brain Bee; a candidate for Mx. WashU, which raises money for City Faces; and a participant in Black Anthology and the African Student Association Fashion Show.

Academia and activism

Borders, who is also a Stamps Scholar, arrived at Washington University in August 2014, shortly after the shooting death of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Mo. She quickly became active in campus and community protests and active in creating the group Washington University Students in Solidarity to facilitate race-relations dialogues and institutional change on campus.

A defining moment occurred that fall, when Borders and many others “were tear-gassed while peacefully protesting in front of the Ferguson Police Department,” Borders remembered. “As I ran in a foggy haze, among the cacophony of sirens and screams, my breath jagged and eyes watering, I decided my life would be dedicated to promoting racial equality.”

Amidst these tumultuous events, Borders discovered a scholarly home in her history classes, which helped her to explore the roots of contemporary unrest. “Organically, my activism grew intertwined with my interest in academia and research,” she said. “My love for knowledge and intellectualism is inherently tangled with my desire for equality.”

The following year, Borders was selected as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and served as research assistant for the oral history project “Documenting Ferguson.” In 2016, she researched the Trans-Atlantic slave trade at the University of Bristol as part of the Fulbright Summer Institute, and, in 2017, she spent six months at the University of Ghana, studying history and creative writing.

She currently is working on her senior honors thesis, “The Possibility of Desire: Sexual Choice within U.S. Colored Troops Widows’ Pensions,” which explores how, after the Civil War, newly freed black women navigated issues of citizenship and intimacy.

“Mimi is an intellectual force of nature,” said her adviser, Iver Bernstein, professor of history and director of American culture studies in Arts & Sciences. “She combines interpretive originality with laser-like attention to both the particulars of everyday life and to the big questions of American political history. What does it mean to have a self, to be a citizen, to be free?”

Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies, called Borders “a born scholar of the best kind.”

“She is rigorous, ambitious, creative, intelligent — a focused, independent thinker of great humility and integrity,” McCune said. “Her work connects theory and history in a mature and masterful way.”

To learn more about the Rhodes Scholarship, visit rhodesscholar.org.

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Oxygen has provided a breath of fresh air to the study of the Earth’s evolution some 400-plus million years ago.

A team of researchers, including a faculty member and postdoctoral fellow from Washington University in St. Louis, found that oxygen levels appear to increase at about the same time as a three-fold increase in biodiversity during the Ordovician Period, between 445 and 485 million years ago, according to a study published Nov. 20 in Nature Geoscience.

“This oxygenation is supported by two approaches that are mostly independent from each other, using different sets of geochemical records and predicting the same amount of oxygenation occurred at roughly the same time as diversification,” said Cole Edwards, the principal investigator of the study conducted when he was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of the paper’s senior author, David Fike, associate professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences.  The other authors are Matthew Saltzman of Ohio State University and Dana Royer of Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

“We made another link between biodiversification and oxygen levels, but this time during the Ordovician where near-modern levels of oxygen were reached about 455 million years ago,” said Edwards, assistant professor in geological and environmental sciences at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C. “It should be stressed that this was probably not the only reason why diversification occurred at that time. It is likely that other changes — such as ocean cooling, increased nutrient supply to the oceans and predation pressures — worked together to allow animal life to diversify for millions of years.”

This explosion of diversity, recognized as the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, brought about the rise of various marine life, tremendous change across species families and types, as well as changes to the Earth, starting at the bottom of the ocean floors. Asteroid impacts were among the many disruptions studied as the reasons for such an explosion of change. Edwards, Fike and others wanted to continue to probe the link between oxygen levels in the ocean-atmosphere and diversity levels of animals through deep time.

Estimating such oxygen levels is particularly difficult: There is no way to directly measure the composition of ancient atmospheres or oceans. Time machines exist only in fiction.

Using geochemical proxies, high-resolution data and chemical signatures preserved in carbonate rocks formed from seawater, the researchers were able to identify an oxygen increase during the Middle and Late Ordovician periods — and a rapid rise, at that. They cite a nearly 80-percent increase in oxygen levels where oxygen constituted about 14 percent of the atmosphere during the Darriwilian Stage (Middle Ordovician 460-465 million years ago) and increased to as high as 24 percent of the atmosphere by the mid-Katian (Late Ordovician 450-455 million years ago).

“This study suggests that atmospheric oxygen levels did not reach and maintain modern levels for millions of years after the Cambrian explosion, which is traditionally viewed as the time when the ocean-atmosphere was oxygenated,” Edwards said. “In this research, we show that the oxygenation of the atmosphere and shallow ocean took millions of years, and only when shallow seas became progressively oxygenated were the major pulses of diversification able to take place.”

The chemical signatures that served as proxies for dissolved inorganic carbon included data from geologic settings ranging from the Great Basin in the western United States, to the northern and eastern U.S., to Canada and its Maritimes, as well as Argentina in the Southern Hemisphere and Estonia in the Eastern Hemisphere. Nevada, Utah, Oklahoma, Missouri (New London north and Highway MM south of St. Louis), Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania were among the data points across the U.S.

The researchers concluded that it remained unclear whether the increased oxygenation had a direct effect on animal life, or even if it had a passive effect by, say, expanding the oxygen-rich ecospace. So it is difficult to resolve if temperature, increased oxygenation or something else served as the driver for biodiversification. But the findings showed that oxygen certainly was spiking during the times of some of the greatest change.

“Oxygen and animal life have always been linked, but most of the focus has been on how animals came to be,” said Saltzman, professor and school director of Earth Sciences at Ohio State. “Our work suggests that oxygen may have been just as important in understanding how animals came to be so diverse and abundant.”

The research was funded by: Evolving Earth Foundation; Geological Society of America Graduate Student Research Grant; Paleontological Society Student Research Grant; and National Science Foundation grants EAR-0819832 and EAR-0745452.

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Seven faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis are among 396 new fellows selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. Michael G. Caparon Jr.; Graham A. Colditz, MD, DrPH; John A. Cooper, MD, PhD; Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD; Susan K. Dutcher; Timothy J. Eberlein, MD — all at the School of Medicine — and Michael L. Gross, of Arts & Sciences and the School of Medicine, will receive the highest honor awarded by AAAS in recognition of their distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications.

The new fellows will be formally announced in the Nov. 24 issue of Science and honored Feb. 17 during the 2018 AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

Michael G. Caparon Jr.

Caparon, professor of molecular microbiology in the Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences (DBBS), is being honored for his studies of disease-causing bacteria, such as those that cause strep throat, scarlet fever and urinary tract infections (UTIs).

His work has advanced understanding of how bacteria and the animals they infect interact with each other to cause disease. Some symptoms of infection are caused by toxins released by bacteria. Caparon studies how interactions between bacteria and the immune system of an infected individual affect the release of specific toxins. The timing of toxin release and levels of toxins in the body may help explain why people infected with the same bacteria develop different constellations of symptoms. He also discovered a widespread system that bacteria use to inject their proteins directly into cells, a first step in transforming the cell’s behavior in ways that help the bacteria survive.

Caparon also studies the most common kind of infection in hospitals: UTIs caused by plastic tubes inserted into the bladder to help patients urinate. Bacteria can’t grow on the tubes directly, but Caparon discovered that the human body coats the plastic with proteins. The bacteria attach to the proteins on the tubes, gaining entry to the bladder and causing disease. He helped develop a vaccine that protected mice from UTIs by preventing bacteria from attaching to the proteins on the tubes.

Caparon earned his bachelor’s degree in microbiology from Michigan State University and a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Iowa. After completing postdoctoral research at Emory University in Atlanta, he joined the faculty at the School of Medicine in 1989.

Graham A. Colditz

Colditz, the Niess-Gain Professor of Surgery and chief of the Division of Public Health Sciences, is being honored for distinguished contributions to cancer epidemiology and prevention, particularly through his translation of research to advance the popular understanding of strategies to reduce cancer risk.

As an epidemiologist and public health expert, Colditz has a longstanding interest in the preventable causes of cancer and other chronic diseases, particularly among women, and translating that research into guidelines and policies aimed at promoting healthier lives. His work has focused on establishing connections between numerous lifestyle factors, such as smoking, physical activity, diet and weight gain, and the risk of cancer and other diseases. He also has documented a link between smoking and risk of stroke and mortality among women, and between weight gain and risk of diabetes and certain cancers.

Colditz also is associate director of prevention and control at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine and deputy director of the university’s Institute for Public Health.

He earned his doctorate in public health at Harvard University and his medical degree at the University of Queensland. He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Royal Brisbane Hospital.

His past honors include the American Association for Cancer Research Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Prevention Research; the American Society of Clinical Oncology-American Cancer Society Award and Lecture; and the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor. He joined the Washington University faculty in 2006.

John A. Cooper

Cooper, professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, is being honored for distinguished contributions to the field of cell motility and the cytoskeleton, particularly for actin assembly and function.

The cellular skeletal system of filaments and motors provides the machinery for cells to change shape, divide and move. This movement is important in understanding disease, especially in understanding how tumor cells spread to other parts of the body and how the body’s immune cells seek and destroy invaders. Cooper is also a member of Siteman Cancer Center.

He received the Distinguished Faculty Award for Graduate Student Teaching from the School of Medicine in 2010, and he has served on the Executive Committee of the Faculty Council and represented the committee to the Faculty Senate.

Cooper earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Brown University. He then earned a medical degree and a doctorate in cell biology from Johns Hopkins University. Cooper came to Washington University in 1984 as a resident in anatomic pathology. He trained as a postdoc in the Department of Biochemistry and then joined the faculty in Cell Biology and Physiology. He was a Lucille P. Markey Scholar and an established investigator of the American Heart Association.

Michael S. Diamond

Diamond, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine, is being honored for his studies of how viruses such as West Nile, Zika, dengue and chikungunya interact with and evade the immune system and cause disease.

Diamond — also a professor of molecular microbiology, and of pathology and immunology — is an infectious diseases specialist known for leading groundbreaking studies into Zika virus, including why and how it causes devastating neurological damage to the developing fetus. With colleagues, Diamond developed the first animal model of Zika infection during pregnancy; showed that the virus can infect the eye; identified protective antibodies against the virus; showed that Zika infection reduces the fertility of male mice; and helped to develop a Zika vaccine that is now in clinical trials.

Before turning his attention to Zika, Diamond was at the forefront of research into West Nile virus, a related virus that began causing brain infections in the United States in the early 2000s. He identified the immune cells and molecules involved in controlling West Nile infection. His experiments have helped identify potential drug and vaccine targets to prevent or treat West Nile disease. In addition, his laboratory showed that viruses can escape an animal’s immune system by chemically modifying their genetic material to masquerade as material from the infected animal. This finding turned out to have implications far beyond viral infections, as it demonstrates one way that the body determines which molecules and cells belong to itself, and which belong to others.

Diamond earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Columbia University, and his medical degree and doctorate in cell and developmental biology from Harvard. After completing a research fellowship in molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Diamond moved to the University of California, San Francisco, where he completed his residency in internal medicine and a clinical fellowship in infectious disease. He returned to Berkeley to complete another research fellowship in infectious diseases in 2001, before joining Washington University School of Medicine that same year.

Susan K. Dutcher

Dutcher, professor of genetics and the interim director of the McDonnell Genome Institute at the School of Medicine, is being honored for distinguished contributions to the field of cell biology, particularly for studies examining the assembly and function of cilia.

Cilia are hair-like structures on the outside surface of cells. These structures play central roles in many aspects of fetal development, ensuring that organs end up in the right place, as well as in health and disease. For example, cilia clear dirt and bacteria from the lungs, help sperm swim and keep fluid flowing in and out of the brain. When cilia malfunction, they can contribute to cancer, kidney disease and other health problems.

Dutcher is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the scientific advisory board of the Children’s Discovery Institute, a partnership between the School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital to support pediatric research. She was a Searle Scholar and has won the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Award to Women Scientists and Engineers. Last year, she received Washington University’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Education. She was recently elected a fellow of the American Society of Cell Biology.

Dutcher earned a bachelor’s degree in biology with honors at Colorado College. She went on to earn a doctorate in genetics from the University of Washington, where she trained with Leland Hartwell, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001. Before coming to Washington University in 1999, she was a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the University of Colorado, where she served as graduate director of the molecular biology program.

Timothy J. Eberlein

Eberlein, the Bixby professor of surgery and head of the Department of Surgery, is being honored for pioneering work as an innovative, national leader in surgery education, research and publishing, and in development of cancer center networks, research programs and clinical protocols. He also is director of Siteman Cancer Center and surgeon-in-chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Eberlein has a strong record in research, having received numerous grants and awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Cancer Society and other organizations. His research has focused on studies of tumor immunology and various immune and vaccine therapies. Eberlein is also a committed teacher and has directed courses for the American College of Surgeons on grant writing as well as the conduct of clinical trials. His bibliography includes more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and chapters, with a focus on tumor immunology, molecular biology and breast cancer.

Eberlein graduated summa cum laude with a degree in biology from the University of Pittsburgh and later earned his medical degree, also from the University of Pittsburgh. He completed his surgical training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and research and clinical fellowships at the National Cancer Institute.

Eberlein is active in the American College of Surgeons, American Board of Surgery and National Cancer Institute. He is a past president of the Society of Surgical Oncology, Society of Surgical Chairs, American Surgical Association and Southern Surgical Association. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine; and an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow, the Swiss Surgical Society and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; and an honorary member of the French Academy of Surgery in Paris.

Michael L. Gross

Gross, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences and of immunology and pathology and of medicine in the School of Medicine, is being recognized for distinguished contributions to physical-organic, analytical, environmental and biophysical chemistry by developing and applying mass-spectrometry methods.

Gross’ current research focuses mainly on the development of mass spectrometry in biophysics, specifically to probe protein-ligand interaction interfaces, affinities and folding/unfolding. The work includes both instrument and method development and application to important proteins and protein complexes.

Gross, who has worked in mass spectrometry for nearly 50 years, is considered one of the most productive and highly cited mass spectrometrists in history.

He began his career at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was distinguished professor of chemistry and director of a National Science Foundation Center for Mass Spectrometry.

In 1994, he joined the faculty at Washington University, where he is director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Mass Spectrometry Research Resource.

He has written more than 600 publications in mass spectrometry and received numerous awards, including the American Chemical Society (ACS) Field and Franklin medal for excellence in mass spectrometry in 1999, the ACS Midwest Award in 2002, the J.J. Thomson Medal in 2006, and, most recently, the 2018 ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry. He was founding editor-in-chief for the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry from 1990-2015.

Gross graduated cum laude with a degree in chemistry from St. John’s University and later earned his doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Minnesota. He completed one year of postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania and another year at Purdue University.

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“I like to think about the difference between a technique and an approach. An arabesque is an arabesque; it’s not anything else. But an approach — to gravity, to movement, to the body — can lead a performer to discovery. The outcomes are potentially infinite.” —  choreographer Raja Feather Kelly

This fall, as a visiting artist at Washington University in St. Louis’ Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences, Kelly — winner of a 2017 Princess Grace Award for choreography — worked with students to create “The Land of 1,000 Dances,” a new piece exploring the instinctive, unconscious and sometimes explosive poetry of everyday movements.

On Dec. 1-3, “The Land of 1,000 Dances” will debut as part of “Here.Now.Together,” the 2017 Washington University Dance Theatre (WUDT) concert. In all, the concert will feature dozens of dancers, selected by audition, performing seven new and original works by faculty and visiting choreographers.

“The traditional model is that choreographers tell dancers what to do,” said David Marchant, professor of the practice in dance and artistic director for WUDT. “It’s a controlled experience. But Raja’s process and aesthetic goals are very different. He sets the conditions under which the dance will be created, and nurtures the dancers’ own capacities to be artistic collaborators.”

Kelly, a former David Dorfman dancer, cites artist Andy Warhol as a formative influence. Like Warhol, “I don’t necessarily feel that I’m trying to create something new,” he said. “But I am trying to see things in another way, from another perspective.

“How we sit, how we stand, how we interact talking to one another — these can be just as beautiful as rehearsed, athletic dancing,” Kelly added. “As a choreographer, my job is take you on a walk. I know what I want you to see, and I hope that you’re able to experience what I’ve experienced.

“The dance is meant to challenge what we think dance is, while also fulfilling those things we love about dance: movement, chance and drama.”

Also on the program are:

• “Tones” by Ting-Ting Chang. This work for six dancers is inspired by the concept of yin and yang. “Many tangible dualities, such as fire and water, are thought of as physical manifestations of the duality symbolized by yin and yang,” explained Chang, assistant professor at the National Taiwan University of Arts and a former Andrew Mellon post-doctoral fellow in the PAD. “This duality lies at the origins of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy.”
• “Out of Shadows” by Mary-Jean Cowell. Cowell, dance program director, collaborates with seven dancers to create a series of dramatic, non-narrative movement images suggesting the “evolution from individual and collective turmoil and insecurity to resolve and assurance.”
• “Now You Here It” by Christine Knoblauch-O’Neal. Inspired by minimalist composer Michael Torke, this work for eight dancers aims to create a sense of moving forward along a positive trajectory. “Torka designed this music as his response to the color purple,” said Knoblauch-O’Neal, director of the master of fine arts in dance program. “I choreographed the work in response to his music. I listened first, then moved.”
• “Refuge” by Marchant. This work for seven dancers, which was debuted last year by the Utah Repertory Dance Theatre, explores themes of displacement and asylum. “At a time when so many people are displaced from home,” explained Marchant, “how do we balance these needs to take care of ourselves and others?”
• “American Mosaic” by Cecil Slaughter. Inspired by current events, this work for nine dancers is choreographed by Cecil Slaughter, professor of practice in dance and founder of The Slaughter Project, the PAD’s professional company-in-residence.
• “One on One” by Rob Scoggins. Choreographic reconstruction by Jennifer Reilly. Set to music by Gabrielle Roth, this sly duet by veteran choreographer Scoggins draws on the movement vocabulary of basketball and contemporary dance.

Tickets and performances

Performances of “Here.Now.Together.” take place in Edison Theatre at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 1 and 2, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 3.

Tickets are $20, or $15 for seniors, students and Washington University faculty and staff. Tickets are available through the Edison Box Office, 314-935-6543. Edison Theatre is located in the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6465 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call 314-935-6543 or visit edison.wustl.edu.

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Several members of the Arts & Sciences community at Washington University in St. Louis participated in the annual American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference, held in October in Minneapolis.

Ignacio Infante, associate professor of comparative literature and of Spanish, spoke on a panel titled “Using Literary Magazines Well: How to Introduce a Writer to the English-Speaking World.”

Several graduate students also spoke on panels at the event. Among them are Rebecca Dehner-Armand Eshkiki, a PhD candidate in comparative literature; Olivia Lott and Gabriella Martin, both PhD candidates in Spanish who also are pursuing certificates in translation studies; Laurel Taylor, a PhD candidate in Japanese and comparative literature; and Annelise Finegan Wasmoen, a PhD candidate in comparative literature who also is pursuing a certificate in translation studies. In addition, Aaron Coleman, a PhD candidate in comparative literature, received a 2017 Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship to attend the conference and participated in the ALTA Fellows Translation Reading.

ALTA was founded in 1978 with the goal of using the art and craft of literary translation to bridge cultural communication and understanding among countries and languages. It is the only organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to literary translation.

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John S. Rigden, a longtime adjunct professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died Friday, Nov. 24, 2017, of cardiac arrest at St. Luke’s Hospital in St. Louis. He was 83.

Rigden, who joined the faculty in 2002, was an active member of the physics department, helping organize and bring in renowned speakers for the department’s colloquia series and participating in the Saturday Science lecture series.

He was instrumental in the American Institute of Physics (AIP) designating Washington University as a site of historical significance to physics.

Arthur Holly Compton, while a faculty member and chair of the physics department in the early 1920s, did experimental work in Eads Hall that resulted in his winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927.

After Rigden brought Compton’s lab to the AIP’s attention, the university was among the first that AIP selected for its Historic Sites Initiative. An AIP plaque was dedicated in 2004 and hangs just inside the main entrance to Eads Hall, marking the building in which Compton discovered the X-ray scattering effect.

Rigden, who was known for his ability to speak and write clearly about physics, authored six books and spoke at numerous international events on physics.

Rigden is survived by his wife of 32 years, Diana Rigden; six children, Jeffrey Rigden, Gregory (Brenda) Rigden, Jonathan (Ann) Rigden, Keith (Linda) Rigden, Karen (Thomas) Montes-de-Oca and Lawrence (Deborah) Brick; nineteen grandchildren; and eleven great-grandchildren.

A visitation will be held from 4-8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 29, with a service at 10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 30, both at Chapel Hill Mortuary, 10305 Big Bend Road, Kirkwood, Mo. Interment will follow at Oak Hill Cemetery.

Memorial donations may be made to the Center for History of Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, Md., 20740.

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For more than a decade, a cross-disciplinary team of chemists and physicists in Arts & Sciences at  Washington University in St. Louis has been chasing the atomic nucleus. With progressive studies, they moved up the element chain to Calcium-48, an extremely rare solid commodity that has more neutrons than protons and, as such, carries a hefty price tag of $100,000 per gram.

It is a quirky material, with this particular study taking Washington University chemists Robert J. Charity and Lee G. Sobotka from Duke’s Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory to the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory.

“If you leave it on a table, it turns to powder,” said co-author Charity, a research professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences. “Calcium oxidizes very quickly in air. It was a worry.”

Ultimately, three grams of Ca-48 helped to produce a double-edged finding for Charity and co-author Willem H. Dickhoff, professor of physics. Their team discovered both a framework to predict where neutrons will inhabit a nucleus and a way to predict the skin thickness of a nucleus.

In their research published Nov. 29 in Physics Review Letters, they predicted how the neutrons would create a thick skin, and that this skin of Ca-48 — 3.5 femtometers (fm) in radius — measured 0.249 + 0.023 fm.

To convert that into centimeters, it would measure 2.49×10^-14 cm. The researchers say the key finding is that the skin is thicker and more neutron-rich than previously believed.

“That links us to astrophysics and, in particular, neutron-star physics,” Dickhoff said of the research results. “The Los Alamos experiment was critical for the analysis we pursued. In the end — because it has this additional set of neutrons — it gets us to information that helps us to further clarify the physics of neutron stars, where there are many more neutrons relative to protons.

“And it gives us the opportunity to predict where the neutrons are in Ca-48,” Dickhoff said. “That is the critical information, which leads to the prediction of the neutron skin.”

For Charity, Dickhoff and co-authors Hossein Mahzoon, PhD ’15, a lecturer in physics at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., and Mack Atkinson, a PhD candidate in physics at Washington University, the chase continues.

They watch with interest as Ca-48 is scheduled to undergo the cleanest skin-thickness test available via the electron accelerator at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va.

Moreover, they proceed to move up the element chain of neutron-rich nuclei to what Charity called the “famous nucleus” of Lead-208. Michael Keim, a senior in physics, is spearheading a study of Lead-208.

“It will give us an experimental handle on whether our analysis is really predictive,” Dickhoff said. “We think we have a good argument why we think it has a thick skin. There is a large group of people … who predict a smaller skin. This is directly relevant for the understanding of the size of neutron stars. It is not yet crystal clear how big a neutron star is — its radius.”

How they made their analysis and reached this predictive framework is part of their decade-long pursuit as well. Their chemistry-physics group subscribes to “dispersion relations,” which Sobotka, who is a professor of chemistry and of physics, explained simply: “It’s what tells you not to laugh before you are tickled. That means causality is properly taken into account.”

In short, they analyze all energies simultaneously rather than focusing on one single energy.

Since first publishing together in 2006, they have used the dispersive optical model (DOM) developed a quarter-century ago by Claude Mahauxa,  a nuclear theorist from Belgium. They expanded upon it — across energy domains and isotopes — so they could attempt to predict where the nuclear particles are.

“We had to make the technical step to include the sensitivities of particles,” Dickhoff said. He used his hands to illustrate the center and then the rest of a nucleus: “If they are here, they were also influenced by everywhere else. Which we call ‘nonlocality.’ Without that, you cannot make these predictions.”

Heavy neutron-rich elements behave differently. So this team keeps ascending the heavyweight classes: Ca-40, Ca-48, Lead-208. “How far can you go out along an isotope chain until losing neutrons?” Charity said. It gives them skin in the skin game.

“When you put extra neutrons in, it doesn’t like that, right?” Charity said of the atomic nucleus. “It has to figure out how to accommodate these extra neutrons. It can put them evenly throughout the nucleus. Or it could put them on the surface. So the question is: Is this force stronger in the low density region of the nucleus or weaker?”

“We know where the protons are,” Dickhoff added. “That is well established experimentally. But you can’t do that easily with neutrons. I simply want to know what a nucleon, a proton or a neutron, is doing. How is it spending its time? Nucleons are more interactive — they do other things than sit quietly in their orbits. That’s what this method can sort of tell us.”

Their nonlocal DOM framework — a decade-plus in the making — uses computer modeling and computations as well as the lab experimentation. It allows them to “make a prediction that is well founded and taken seriously,” Dickhoff said. “Next, we will have a measurement for Lead-208.”

This study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of Nuclear Physics grant DE-FG02-87ER-40316, and National Science Foundation grants PHY-1304242, PHY-1613362 and PHY-1520971.

The post Reaching for neutron stars appeared first on The Source.

Tim Hsu, LLM ’01, JD ’04, and David Ma, PhD ’09, have long been interested in helping fellow Taiwanese students at Washington University meet and connect. The two met through the WashU Taiwanese Graduate Student Association in 2003 when Hsu was serving as president. Ma had entered the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences’ doctoral program.

“Tim was a great big brother for us younger fellows,” says Ma, who, inspired by his friend, became president of the TGSA himself a year later.

Both of them eventually moved back to Taiwan. Hsu is a founder and managing partner at Washington Group & Associates, a firm of about 30 lawyers in Taipei, as well as dean of the Law School at Chinese Culture University. After graduating, Ma worked with a biotech incubator for several years and in 2014 co-founded Apollo Medical Optics, where he is now chief operating officer.

Despite busy careers, Hsu and Ma co-founded the WashU Alumni Club in Taiwan in 2012, hoping to continue the fellowship and build on the valuable network they found at WashU. Hsu served as president of the club until 2017, when Ma took over as president in January.

The club’s routine dinner parties, Ma says, are a wonderful opportunity to “update each other on our progress, share information and make new friends.” Because they also host wine tastings, karaoke nights and joint events with other alumni clubs, such as those from the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia, there are always new connections to be made.

The alumni club in Taiwan relies heavily on its volunteers, and Hsu and Ma are very grateful for their efforts. “Because of them,” Ma says, “we are able to keep up momentum and continue to grow.” So far, all the club’s events have taken place in Taipei, but in the coming year, Hsu and Ma plan to also host events in Taichung and Kaohsiung, so that alums who might be farther away can take part.

In the future, Ma and Hsu hope that the alumni club they’ve built in Taiwan — a fun, organized group — can serve as both a model and a resource for other WashU alumni clubs in Asia and expand opportunities to connect alumni in the region to one another in order to share memories, knowledge and the experience of being part of the WashU family.

The post Volunteer Spotlight: Tim Hsu, LLM ’01, JD ’04 and David Ma, PhD ’09 appeared first on The Source.

Lingyu Zhou, a Washington University in St. Louis School of Law alumna, has been awarded a highly selective 2019 Schwarzman Scholarship for graduate study at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Zhou, LLM ’14, will be in the program’s third cohort at Tsinghua, one of China’s most prestigious universities. She is the first member of the Washington University community to receive the fully funded scholarship. Washington University Arts & Sciences senior Muhammad Elahi and James Loomis, AB ’17, were named semifinalists.

Zhou, who is from China, is one of 140 students selected this year from 4,042 applicants from around the world. Schwarzman Scholars are chosen through a rigorous selection process designed to evaluate not only academic and intellectual ability, but also leadership potential, entrepreneurial spirit, character and desire to understand other cultures, perspectives and positions.

After earning her LLM, Zhou founded a company called Panda Town and has created an internet financing platform with nearly 1 million registered users. Through her Schwarzman Scholarship, she hopes to gain a deeper business insight on a global scale.

Established in 2016, the Schwarzman Scholars program is designed to prepare the next generation of global leaders. Scholars pursue a one-year master’s in global affairs with concentrations in either public policy, economics and business, or international studies. Zhou will begin her studies in fall 2018.

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These quotes are from Hold That Thought, a podcast produced by Arts & Sciences, where in 15 minutes you can learn about the allure of Shakespeare, the most attractive personality traits or the secrets stored in rocks. Check it out on Soundcloud, Stitcher, PRX, iTunes or thought.artsci.wustl.edu

The Blues
“For several decades … the tent shows were a huge entertainment form. They were largely [staged by] all-black companies . And they had the blues. In these huge tents … a new sound was coming to life.”
— Paige McGinley, assistant professor of performing arts, in “Staging the Blues:
The Ma Rainey Story”

Unions
“Labor unions brought working people into the political sphere. Now we’re in a situation where organized labor has vastly declined in its ability to do that.”
— Jake Rosenfeld, associate professor of sociology, in “Right to Work? Unions & Income Inequality”

Asthma
“It’s the No. 1 reason that children miss school. It is a chronic condition. … And statistics do show that asthma disproportionately impacts poor and minority children in urban centers.”
— Kelly Harris, doctoral student in education, on what inspired her to use Geographic Information Systems to map “hotspots” of childhood asthma in St. Louis in “Mapping Asthma: The Geography of Inequality”

Library
“As soon as I saw this … there was no doubt that we have an authentic Michelangelo document in our library. It was completely unknown — or completely unpublished —at that time.”
— William Wallace, the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History, in “The Many Lives of Michelangelo”

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Sam Coster was 23 when he was first visited by the blood dragon, a hallucination that would burst out of his chest or appear in rooms as he entered them. It was the fall of 2013, and Coster, who had graduated with a psychology degree in 2012, shrugged off the visions because he was so busy. Seven months earlier, Coster and his brother Seth had launched their own game-development studio, Butterscotch Shenanigans.

The two-man team produced mobile games at a rapid rate, usually in just 48 work days. Seth did the programming, and Sam created the art. But after producing two popular games, ­Quadropus Rampage and Towelfight 2, Sam developed a ­recurring fever, extreme lethargy and lumps on his chest. The vision of the blood dragon began to appear daily. Sensing ­something was deeply wrong, he decided to see a doctor.

The news was devastating: Coster had a rare, aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and it was already in its final stage. He didn’t know it at the time, but his chance of survival was a mere 7 percent. Coster started treatment immediately.

He also started to think about his work. The brothers had been creating a small, unambitious endless runner for mobile. Like Butterscotch’s other releases, it was purposefully silly and irreverent — and now held no interest for Coster.

“This is not the last game I want to make before I die,” he remembers telling his brother. Instead, he wanted to draw players into an imaginative universe and keep them spellbound for hours — to create a game so great that “we’d keep ourselves alive just to build it.” Seth agreed, and the two started working on a game tentatively titled F—k Cancer.

As Coster underwent aggressive chemotherapy, he began to look at the rest of his life the way he looked at game development, removing the unimportant to focus on work, family, his then-girlfriend (now wife) and close friends.

By December 2014, Coster had completed his cancer treatment and spent several months recuperating. The game — now called Crashlands — was moving along when Coster found a new lump. The cancer was back.

Coster entered “salvage” chemotherapy in early 2015, and he and Crashlands entered their darkest phases. Around this time, Coster’s oldest brother, Adam, joined Butterscotch Shenanigans. Despite Adam’s fresh perspective, Crashlands still didn’t differentiate itself from other popular crafting games such as Minecraft.

Plus, Coster had to undergo BEAM chemotherapy to “nuke” his immune system. Once Coster could no longer make blood on his own, he would get two stem-cell transplants, effectively giving him a new immune system that would defeat the cancer for good.

“I truly feel that I was pushed through the veil of life to the other side,” Coster says. “And my doctor held on to just my pinkie toe, and then dragged me back across.”

As Coster emerged from his treatment, Crashlands started to look up, too. The brothers figured that adding a story to their game would make it stand out. So in just a few weeks, Coster wrote the story of Flux, an interplanetary-delivery driver who crash lands on a strange planet, where she has to build shelter, craft weapons and tame strange creatures to survive.

By the end of 2015, the brothers were beta-testing Crashlands and preparing for a January 2016 launch. Coster went in for his post-transplant scan and got his first cancer-free verdict.

When Crashlands launched, Coster’s story attracted a lot of press, and the game received phenomenal reviews. In 10 days, Crashlands sold 131,000 units. It went on to be named a top game of 2016 by Time magazine and game of the year by Touch Arcade. It was even nominated for Best Mobile Game of 2016 at the DICE awards, the game industry’s equivalent to the Oscars. Coster was also named to Forbes Magazine’s 2018 30 Under 30 list.

With the success of Crashlands, the brothers were able to expand their studio and hire four more people. They are now working on their next game, ScuffleBuddies.

For Coster, the ordeal taught him one of life’s most important lessons, he says, “When you experience setback after setback, keep in mind this basic fact: If you’re not dead, you’re not done.”

The post The game of life appeared first on The Source.

On topics from Eisenhower to atheists, here are the latest faculty and alumni books that are sure to provoke, delight and enlighten.

The post Must-reads appeared first on The Source.

Science seems like a nonpartisan endeavor, but this spring the National Cancer Institute; the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; the National Science Foundation; and the National Institutes of Health found themselves in the political crosshairs, with threatened budget cuts.

“[The cuts] were related to a wider national conversation about whether or not science is opinion versus fact,” says Barbara Schaal, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Mary-Dell Chilton Professor in the Department of Biology. “Science oftentimes provides information that goes contrary to some people’s political agenda and their economic agenda.”

As past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society, Schaal had to defend science and explain why it matters. Thanks to efforts like hers, the budget cuts never came to fruition and science funding for many institutions actually increased.

What is the importance of science?

Science is the basis for a great deal of the well being not only of the citizens of the world, our nation, but also countries themselves. And so that is the result of the kinds of discoveries that science makes and then the application of those things. So for example, if you look at the application of science, one of the major applications of course is in health care. And we wouldn’t have the health care that we have now if there wasn’t an understanding of the basic science: principles of physiology of molecular biology, how diseases are transmitted. Another example is agriculture. That’s a great example of an applied science, the science of how plants grow and how we can increase their yields. So our health and our food is the result of basic science discoveries.

Why do general scientific research?

When there was the initial project to sequence the human genome, there was a lot of pushback on that. What possible benefit could just knowing the sequence of DNA of a human be? And of course now with technological advances, we can sequence many people. We have an industry, 23 and Me. But what that ability to sequence the human genome has done is allowed us, for example, to go into specific cancers to sequence their genome, find the specific mutation and then target the therapies based on the DNA sequence. So this is a tremendous example that has immediately affected health and it’s a booming area with lots and lots of research at Washington University Medical School and a lot of different medical schools. So I think that’s a really good example of basic science and how important it’s been.

What’s the impact of government budget cuts on science?

There’s the actual funding of research, and then there’s also, I think, a perception of what’s going on in science. If a career in science is not particularly secure, you would choose an alternate career, because everybody has to have a job. You have to be able to support yourself. So that’s a tremendous concern, not only the short-term, the current projects that are going on, the projects that will be applied for in the next year, the next five years, but then what does this do to the whole attract-ability, the whole enterprise itself?

The post Three questions with Dean Barbara Schaal on why science matters appeared first on The Source.

Matthew is a profane man, a tax collector. Then Jesus says, “Follow me.” And Matthew does.

In “The Calling of St. Matthew” (1599-1600), Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio captures the biblical tale with power and drama. Yet the painting also poses questions. Which figure, exactly, is Matthew? How did he arrive at this place and time? What happens before he’s called, and what happens afterward?

“Painters control color, light, form, composition and scale,” said William Wallace, who  teaches the seminar “Caravaggio: Master and Murderer.” “But they struggle to imply sound and motion. Rather than just study the painting as a frozen moment in time, I thought it would be interesting to work out, kinesthetically, the whole sequence of events.”

Wallace is the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Earlier this fall, Wallace enlisted two colleagues from the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences. David Marchant, professor of practice in dance, helped students deconstruct how Caravaggio choreographs the scene. Robert Henke, professor of drama and of comparative literature, helped explore different scenarios and potential outcomes.

The group then staged the scene, in several iterations, for a small audience in Mallinckrodt Center. The differences are subtle but instructive. In one version, Matthew is reluctant; in another, he comes willingly. His companions are awestruck, or puzzled, or envious.

“It’s okay to imagine something that’s outside the frame of the painting,” Marchant said. “Assuming that we already know the story limits its potential. Alternate stories open up other possibilities.”

Wallace concluded, “Art historians should do more dancing.”

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“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”  ― William H. Gass, from “A Temple of Texts”

William H. Gass, the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, died Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017, at his home in University City, Mo. He was 93.

One of the most acclaimed and influential writers of his generation, Gass was author of the novels “Omensetter’s Luck” (1966), “The Tunnel” (1995) and “Middle C” (2013), as well as the novella “Willie Master’s Lonesome Wife” (1968) and the story collections “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories” (1968), “Cartesian Sonata” (1998) and “Eyes” (2015).

In his 1970 essay “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction,” Gass coined the term “metafiction” to refer to works of imagination that self-consciously reflect their status as such.

“There are metatheorems in mathematics and logic, ethics has its linguistic oversoul, everywhere lingos to converse about lingos are being contrived, and the case is no different in the novel,” Gass explained. For writers of metafiction, “the forms of fiction serve as the material upon which further forms can be imposed.”

Gass won the National Book Critics Circle Award an unprecedented three times, for the essay collections “Habitations of the Word” (1978), “Finding a Form” (1996) and “Tests of Time” (2003). Other books include “Fiction and the Figures of Life” (1971), “On Being Blue” (1976), “The World Within the Word” (1978), “Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation” (1999) and “Life Sentences” (2012). “The William Gass Reader” is forthcoming from Knopf.

“Bill’s excellence as a writer was only exceeded by the irreverence with which he undermined authority in a language that is as subversive as it is complicatedly clear, shimmering with great beauty and unexpected metaphors,” said Gerhild Williams, vice provost and Barbara Schaps Thomas and David M. Thomas Professor in the Humanities. “Authority was ever the target of his writing, whether openly denounced or quietly undermined in his words. Bill Gass never stopped challenging our ways of employing words and our intention in doing so! And his were always magnificently on target!”

Born in 1924 in Fargo, N.D., Gass served in the U.S. Navy from 1943-46. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1947 from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and a doctorate in philosophy in 1954 from Cornell University. He taught at Purdue University before joining Washington University’s philosophy department in Arts & Sciences in 1969.

In 1990, Gass founded the International Writers Center in Arts & Sciences — now known as the Center for the Humanities — and served as director until 2000. He received an honorary doctorate of humanities from Washington University in 2005.  The William H. Gass Papers, which include manuscripts and proof material toward his books, are held by Washington University Libraries.

In 1997, Gass received the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award for his fiction and essays. In 2000, he won the PEN/Nabokov Award for “Reading Rilke” and the PEN/Nabokov Lifetime Achievement Award. Among his other honors were four Pushcart Prizes and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. His work was included in “Best American Short Stories” for 1959, 1961, 1962, 1968 and 1980, and “Best American Essays” for 1986, 1992, 1995, 1998 and 2000.

Gass is survived by his wife, Mary Henderson Gass, and their daughters, Catherine and Elizabeth; by three children from his first marriage, Richard, Robert, and Susan; and by five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at a later date.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch food writer Dan Neman recently learned what the members of fraternity Beta Theta Pi have known for years — Washington University in St. Louis senior Cole Warner makes a killer cookie. Warner’s recipe for pumpkin-white chocolate chip snickerdoodles bested about 80 reader recipes to win the Judges’ Pick award for the annual St. Louis Post-Dispatch Cookie Contest.

“I don’t think it was the pumpkin, the white chocolate chips, the cinnamon or the pumpkin pie spice that made his recipe stand out. I think rather that it was all that butter and sugar,” Neman raved.

The Record caught up with Warner at his parents’ home in St. Louis, where he was making cookie dough for the annual Beta Theta Pi holiday party. Typically, he bakes 300 to 400 cookies, but this year he served 500 chocolate chip, chocolate crinkle and, of course, pumpkin-white chocolate chip cookies.

“It’s my final hurrah, so I went all out,” said Warner, a Gephardt Institute Civic Scholar who is studying American culture studies in Arts & Sciences. “Some of my favorite memories have been at the Christmas party. Seeing someone smile as they take that first bite is a pretty great moment for me.”

Here, Warner shares more about his winning recipe, why he loves to bake and what he does when he’s not whipping sugar and butter.

Tell us more about your recipe.

I read a lot of baking blogs, and I came across a recipe like this one a couple of years ago. After tinkering with it, I came up with a cookie that has just the right amount of pumpkin flavor. I love pumpkin and I love fall, so this cookie is a favorite in my cookie arsenal.

Are you the most popular person at Washington University?

I like to joke that I’ve made friends with cookies and baked goods. Before move-in day my freshman year, I made chocolate chip cookies for people on my floor and anyone who stopped in. It was definitely a great excuse for me to begin a conversation. Cookies are a great bridge to a friendship. After all, who can say no to a cookie?

Today, I’ll often go home for Sunday meals and get out the mixer to make a batch of cookies to bring back. It’s so cathartic to get lost in the process of following a recipe and knowing there will be a sweet treat at the end of all of the work.

You are planning to attend medical school. Explain how your work as an American culture studies major has prepared you for that field.

One of things I’ve loved most about WashU is how I’ve been able to take classes across the spectrum, from early American history to cancer biology. All of that will impact how I will, hopefully, one day, show up as a doctor. I obviously love science and respect the work of researchers, but I am especially interested in patient care. And to do that well, you need to know patients as individuals and as part of a larger system. That’s where my classes about America’s history have made a difference. They have pushed me away from ignorance.

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Rebecca Lester, associate professor of sociocultural anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded the 2017 Stirling Prize for the Best Publication in Psychological Anthropology.

Presented annually by the Society for Psychological Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association, the Stirling Prize recognizes a published work that makes an outstanding contribution to any area of psychological anthropology.

Lester’s article, “Self-Governance, Psychotherapy, and the Subject of Managed Care: Internal Family Systems Therapy and the Multiple Self in a US Eating Disorders Clinic,” was published in the American Ethnologist in January 2017.

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Ever since the emergence of the religious right as a political force in the late 1970s, scholars and commentators have sought to explain its origins, often by depicting it as a reaction to the sexual rebellion and social movements of the preceding decade.

But the true origins of our political and religious divides, argues Washington University in St. Louis religious historian R. Marie Griffith, lie in sharp disagreements that emerged among American Christians almost a century ago.

In her new book, “Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics” (Basic Books, 2017), Griffith offers a compelling history of the religious debates over sex and sexuality that came to dominate American public life.

“Sex is at the very heart of our nation’s bitter culture wars and our fractured politics,” said Griffith, the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor and director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University.

“A century ago, Americans across religious and political lines believed male and female were divinely made types attached to clear gender roles,” Griffith said. “Over time, the link between biological sex and the social roles ascribed to men and women was contested and bitterly debated, pitting traditionalists against progressives. Today’s culture wars over issues like transgender rights, contraception and abortion are the result of the rising conflict between these points of view.”

Griffith’s book, released Dec. 12, tells a story of the steady breakdown, since the early 20th century, of a onetime Christian consensus about sexual morality and gender roles, and of the resulting battles over sex among self-professed Christians — and between some groups of Christians and non-Christians.

She traces the roots of America’s sexual divide to the 1920s, when — after women gained the right to vote nationwide — the longstanding religious consensus about sexual morality began to fray irreparably. The slow but steady unraveling of that consensus in the decades that followed has transformed America’s broader culture and public life, dividing our politics and pushing sex to the center of our public debate, she argues.

Today, conservative Christians are often the most vocal political opponents of abortion, gay rights and other sexual freedoms. But as Griffith shows, American Christians spent much of the 20th century sparring with one another over sexual matters. It is true that, in debates over contraception, obscenity, interracial marriage, sex education, abortion, sexual harassment and gay marriage, many Christians resisted new sexual norms. But many others advocated for greater openness.

Griffith introduces readers to remarkable individuals from both sides: Mary Steichen Calderone, the physician and deeply religious Quaker who pioneered science-based sexuality curricula in schools; Billy James Hargis, the anti-communist radio preacher who made sex a centerpiece of fundamentalist politics; and Francis Kissling, a Catholic feminist and abortion rights activist. It also reveals the surprising roles religion played in the careers of well-known figures like birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and Bill Clinton accuser Paula Jones.

Over time, Griffith argues, views regarding sex came to stand in for attitudes toward change and modern ideas in general; on the right, resistance to changing sexual norms often was driven by fears of women’s freedom, ethnic and racial minorities, and national decline. And whether resistant to or supportive of greater sexual freedoms, religious advocates were confident that God supported their cause, helping to explain why Americans’ public debates over sex and sexuality became particularly ferocious. For many, on both sides, conflicts over sex and sexuality were — and are — proxy struggles over the fate and virtue of the American nation itself.

The book already has received national recognition, featured in reviews and news stories at Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly  and The Atlantic as well as an interview recorded for the NPR program Fresh Air.

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