Hold That Thought

Today, we're going back to 18th century Florence, Italy to tell the story of one museum, La Specola, and its infamous exhibit of gruesome wax anatomical models. At the time of its founding in 1771, the new Archduke Peter Leopold found himself confronting the deep-rooted legacy of his famous predecessors--the Medici. La Specola quickly became the crux of a larger movement within Tuscany, and the museum and its wax inhabitants helped set the course for a new Enlightenment era. Rebecca Messbarger, a professor of Italian and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, is our guide, and she explains how one figure, the Venus, became the central to this new regime of the human body.

High-school students sometimes have a bad reputation when it comes to language and literacy. Teenagers may be well versed in YouTube and social media, but these outlets are more known for shortened words and poor grammar than articulate speech and writing. However, Korina Jocson, assistant professor of education at Washington University in St. Louis, sees a much different picture. As a researcher and teacher, Jocson has observed and analyzed the ways that students use the beauty and power of poetry to make sense of their experiences, to comment on culture and politics, and to create multimedia art and storytelling. The question now becomes, how can educators bring the energy of a slam poetry competition back into the classroom?

What can parents and teachers do to help young children become successful readers and writers? In what ways does a 2-year-old begin to understand the differences between written words and pictures? Rebecca Treiman, the Burke and Elizabeth High Baker Professor of Child Developmental Psychology, shares recent research that explores how children around the globe take their first steps toward reading and writing. Treiman heads the Reading and Language Lab at Washington University in St. Louis.

Imagine that you're walking down the street and hear someone speaking with a British accent. What assumptions might you make about that person based on his or her voice? Would you come to the same conclusion if that person had a heavy southern drawl or sounded like he or she spoke Spanish as a first language? John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, continues his discussion of linguistic profiling and describes how he hopes his research will lead to policies that increase Americans' acceptance of linguistic diversity. To hear Baugh's personal story about how first became interested in this line of research, be sure to listen to Linguistic Insights, the first episode in our ongoing series about language.

To kick off our newest topic, On Language, John Baugh, the Margaret Bush Wilson Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, shares two stories of personal linguistic epiphanies. Baugh researches linguistic profiling, or the ways in which people react to and treat one another based on speech. His initial interest in this line of work began when he himself encountered linguistic profiling earlier in his career. Baugh shares that experience, as well as a childhood incident in which he first realized that accents can carry as much meaning as words. Baugh will also be featured next week on Hold That Thought, when we'll hear more about specific research projects and the types of policies that he believes would help Americans accept linguistic diversity.

As we learned last week in Discovering Dark Matter, since the 1930s scientists have been seeking answers about unseen mass in the universe. We know that the gravitation of dark matter has an enormous effect on galaxies, and we also know that it may be made up of weakly interacting particles. But how do researchers search for something that's invisible? James Buckley, professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, has spent part of his career hunting for neutralinos, a yet-undiscovered type of particle that may hold the answer to the dark-matter mystery. Buckley describes the evidence for the existence of neutralinos, the methods he uses to seek them out, and how he first became interested in the "dark and violent" side of the universe.

Back in the early 1930s, astronomer Fritz Zwicky discovered a problem. Zwicky studied galaxy clusters, which can contain hundreds to thousands of galaxies loosely bound together by gravity. While examining one such cluster, he realized that the visible material within the galaxies did not have enough mass to hold the cluster together. As a result, he inferred that some dark, unseen matter must exist. Decades later, Ramanath Cowsik theorized about the source of this extra gravitational force. Cowsik, who now directs the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, describes the history of dark matter and shares how his discovery changed the way scientists think about this invisible force in the universe.

Black holes - pools of gravity so powerful that even light can't escape them - remain some of the most mysterious objects in the universe. Yet, though black holes themselves are invisible, the matter around them is not. In fall 2014, Henric Krawczynski, professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis, will use an instrument called X-Calibur to study two "beautifully bright" black holes visible from Earth's northern hemisphere. By measuring the polarization of X-rays emitted from material near the black holes, X-Calibur will help Krawczynski and his colleagues investigate questions that have perplexed scientists since Albert Einstein first proposed his Theory of General Relativity.

As a society, we are pretty conflicted about mathematics. On one hand, we recognize that math has allowed us to achieve some amazing things, including space travel and much of our technology. Yet, math gets a bad rap in popular culture. In movies and tv shows, we're more likely to see kids complaining about or struggling with algebra or calculus than enjoying it. But what's so scary about math? For those of us who might have shied away from it in the past, John E. McCarthy, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Mathematics at Washington University, breaks math down to its most fundamental essence and explains how both pure and applied mathematics are only another way to examine and understand our world.

William Bubelis, assistant professor of classics at Washington University in St. Louis, introduces us to the exciting field of numismatics. What is numismatics? Well, we had the same question. Essentially, numismatics focuses on coins and currency. Professor Bubelis explains how coins can reveal unique and important information about the ancient cultures from which they came. He also explores the origins of counterfeiting and considers objects people might not normally consider as currency. There is also a short accompanying video on our website, which will be released on 12/19/13. Visit: https://thought.artsci.wustl.edu/podcasts/uncovering-numismatic

On December 9, 2012, a balloon the size of a football field ascended nearly 140,000 feet into the Antarctic sky. The balloon carried Super-TIGER, a two-ton instrument built to detect cosmic rays. Drs. W. Robert Binns and Martin Israel, who head the cosmic ray group within the physics department at Washington University in St. Louis, describe this record-breaking experiment and explain why they seek to know more about the origins of cosmic rays.

Christine Floss, research professor in the physics department at Washington University in St. Louis, spends her time investigating microscopic specks of dust that have remained unchanged since before the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. These presolar grains help researchers like Floss answer questions about the formation of elements, the solar system, and the universe as a whole. Floss describes how she and her students search for presolar grains in ancient meteorites, why tiny grains of silica are particularly fascinating, and how as an undergraduate geology major she first became hooked on outer space.

What questions have yet to be answered about the Moon? Bradley Jolliff, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, describes how lunar samples and orbiters continue to provide fascinating insights into the geologic history of Earth's closest neighbor. Jolliff, who works with the Mars rover Opportunity, also shares his dreams of a future lunar rover that would visit sites that continue to puzzle scientists, including the immense South Pole-Aitken Basin and the icy, permanently shadowed lands near the Moon's poles.

As both a mathematician and a musician, professor David Wright believes in approaching the world both analytically and artistically. Back in 2002, he designed and began teaching "Mathematics & Music," an undergraduate course focused on the connections between these two abstract and beautiful fields of study. Wright, who serves as associate director of the musical group Ambassadors of Harmony in addition to chairing the mathematics department at Washington University in St. Louis, shares some concepts from the course and reflects on both the artistry of mathematics and the mathematical structure of music.

What do polygamy, prostitution, and pet inheritance have in common? For the final episode of Hold That Thought's 10-part series on American Identities, Adriennne Davis, professor of law and vice provost at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the role of law in regulating intimate relationships in the United States. According to Davis, personal attachments, identity, and citizenship are fundamentally linked, and in her research, she envisions concrete ways in which the U.S. legal system might be more accepting of irregular forms of intimacy.