Neal Conan, host of "Talk of the Nation," was in St. Louis on Oct. 3 for a live broadcast from UMSL at Grand Center. He is pictured here in a file photo from 2008 when he broadcast live from the Touhill Center at UMSL. (Photo by August Jennewein)

Wednesday night’s presidential debate might have taken place in Denver, but the University of Missouri–St. Louis at Grand Center took center stage for NPR listeners. The new home of St. Louis Public Radio | 90.7 KWMU was the setting for a live broadcast of “Talk of the Nation.”

Host Neal Conan and his guests previewed the debate, discussed national and regional news of the day and provided post-debate analysis. A live studio audience watched and participated in the national broadcast of the program.

Visit the “Talk of the Nation” website to listen to the Oct. 3 episode broadcast from UMSL at Grand Center. Visit the Beyond November website to listen to the post-debate analysis. Beyond November is a collaborative effort of St. Louis nonprofit media outlets including St. Louis Public Radio, Nine Network of Public Media and the St. Louis Beacon.

Nineteen-year-old Rino Sashihara was removed from the wildly popular Japanese girl group AKB48 and transferred to a far-less-celebrated sister group HKT48 after a a man claiming to be an ex-boyfriend said he had half naked pictures of her. She denied the allegations, but the damage to her reputation was done. (Photo from HKT48 official website)

Taylor Swift turns her romantic heartaches into country music gold. Teenage girls eat up all the details of the latest “it” couple Justin and Selena.

While celebrity dalliances have long been fodder for consumers of American tabloids, it’s the complete opposite in Japan where public pureness is expected from its pop singers. That means a complete dating ban. Even a whiff of a romantic interest can torpedo a pop career.

Performers in Japan are fantasy products and keeping them pure and innocent allows fans to imagine them as potential partners, according to Laura Miller, a prominent Japanese scholar who is the Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

Miller was quoted in a story in The Atlantic about the dating prohibition enforced by Japan’s entertainment industry. And she doubts the dating ban will end anytime soon.

“It’s in their interest and those who are trying to make money off them to keep their actual lives, personalities, and humanity separate,” she said.

Click here or below to view a music video from the immensely popular Japanese girl group AKB48.

UMSL archaeologist Michael Cosmopoulos has been awarded a $275,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue his summer excavations in Greece. (Photo by August Jennewein)

In the summer of 2010, University of Missouri–St. Louis archaeologist Michael Cosmopoulos and his team uncovered the oldest written record in Europe.

The rare artifact was unearthed at an excavation site in Iklaina, Greece, where for the past 15 years Cosmopoulos has led a team of students, staff and specialists.

Now, thanks to a generous $275,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Cosmopoulos, the Hellenic Government Karakas Family Endowed Professor of Greek Studies at UMSL, will continue his summer dig project in Greece. The project serves as a field school for UMSL and other students.

This is the third federal grant awarded to the project. Cosmopoulos received a $130,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and a previous $200,000 grant also from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Cosmopoulos’ work has garnered extensive media attention from noteworthy publications like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The New York Times and National Geographic. In fact, he’s included in a new National Geographic Society website feature about “Explorers.” It features a Q-and-A with Cosmopoulos where he delves into his inspiration for archaeology, his hero and what his typical day looks like.

Visit nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/michael-cosmopoulos/ to read the “Explorers” profile.

Click here or below to view a video of Cosmopoulos discussing the often bleak myths surrounding the ancient underworld of Greece.

(Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr)

On a national level, the November election will be the most important in four years. But for St. Louisans, the primary election Tuesday (Aug. 7) was also a big deal. Or as it was aptly written by University of Missouri–St. Louis political scientist Terry Jones in a St. Louis Beacon commentary last week, “If you want to decide who would best serve your views in the U.S. House of Representatives or Missouri General Assembly, don’t wait until November.”

Jones, the chair of the Department of Political Science, pointed out that the winners of the aforementioned races wouldn’t become official until after the fall election, but a win in August pretty much meant a win in November.

“August primary elections once determined the contenders for the final choice in November,” Jones wrote in the Beacon. “It was how Democratic and Republic voters chose who would best represent their respective political teams. But as legislative districts have become less competitive, primaries are the de facto general election.”

UMSL political scientists fielded numerous media inquiries before and after Tuesday’s election to help make sense of the races and results.

The day after the polls closed, Dave Robertson, Curators’ Teaching Professor of Political Science, weighed in on KMOX (1120 AM) and said the clear national story was Todd Akin’s win to earn the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill

“Akin was able to win a lot of votes in the St. Louis area,” Robertson told KMOX. “That was a little bit of a surprise to me. I thought (John) Brunner and Akin would pretty much split the vote.”

Robertson said the public prayer amendment pulled people to the polls and likely helped Akin. About a million people cast their vote on the issue. And while the race for the GOP nomination wasn’t as close as Robertson had thought, he predicted in The Washington Post that McCaskill would be viewed as the underdog this fall. He also spoke with The Kansas City (Mo.) Star about the forthcoming Akin-McCaskill race.

The political scientists were less surprised by the outcome of the Lacy Clay-Russ Carnahan race, which pitted the two Democrat congressmen against one another in the newly consolidated St. Louis congressional districts. Clay was the winner.

“The redrawn 1st Congressional District was still largely the old 1st Congressional District,” Jones said on KTVI (Channel 2). “So the contest was taking place on Congressman Clay’s home turf.”

In addition, Lana Stein, professor emeritus of political science, was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Clay’s primary win.

Robertson also discussed the election results on KSDK (Channel 5) and St. Louis Public Radio | 90.7 KWMU. All three of the political scientists provided the media and public with insight of the races and issues on the ballot prior to the election, including a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article on the prayer amendment. It featured quotes from David Kimball, associate professor of political science, and also ran in USA Today and the Washington Post.

(Photo by MoDOT via Flickr)

The Midwest sure could use some more rain. But what the region lacks in precipitation, it makes up for in news stories about the drought. One that hits close to home is the recent Marketplace piece on the extended dry spell’s toll on river transport cities, like St. Louis.

The story featured comments from Don Sweeney, an expert on the economics of water transportation and associate director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. He said cargo on river barges makes its way into plenty of industries, but is only a small slice of a much larger pie.

“(It’s) roughly a $7 billion to $10 billion industry nationwide,” Sweeney told Marketplace. “And in a $14 trillion economy, that’s not a big deal. But it is a big deal in the sense that it moves some of the more basic products across the nation.”

UMSL Daily caught up with Sweeney recently to get more of his thoughts on what the drought means for river shipping.

Can you put in context the drought’s impact on shipping via the Mississippi River?

The drought conditions are variable depending on exactly where you are in the river basin. For example, north of St. Louis on the Mississippi River navigation conditions and operations are near normal with no real shipping restrictions. Below St. Louis, there are areas of the river where tow sizes (the number of barges that can be pushed by a single towboat) and barge drafts (how deep each barge can be loaded) are significantly restricted to less than normal operating levels. Right, now, the restrictions on tow sizes and barge loadings relative to normal operations generally get tighter as you move south on the Mississippi River (near Memphis, Tenn., Vicksburg, Miss., Baton Rouge, La., etc.). The restrictions increase shipping costs as each barge and towboat is made less productive than it normally would be while incurring essentially the same operating costs to move less cargo per tow.

Will this have any effect on the prices for consumers?

Prices on goods for consumers may increase slightly due to increased barge transportation costs during a drought. Generally shipping costs are a relatively small component of delivered prices of goods moved on the Mississippi River. For a prolonged drought, price effects felt by consumers could become significant depending on the goods in question and the duration of the drought.

Are substitutes for barge shipping used in times of drought?

Alternative modes of transportation, to the extent they are available, are used to meet shipping needs that barge shipping can’t meet in times of drought. Also, other mitigating strategies such as moving products to and from different markets may be utilized if available. If the drought is anticipated, inventories built by advanced shipping of products may be used to buffer the drought’s effects.

UMSL biologist Zuleyma Tang-Martínez has written a commentary about a study that pokes holes in long-held conclusions about male mating habits, such as when peacocks raise their colorful fan of tail feathers and shake them. (Photo by Benson Kua via Flickr)

During courtship, peacocks raise their colorful fan of tail feathers and shake them. The objective is to advertise to potential mates and win female favor. But a recent WIRED magazine article is poking holes in that theory, indicating that the mating dance between the sexes is far more complicated than male showmanship.

The prevailing theory in biology that males compete for female attention was established by English geneticist Angus Bateman following the outcome of a study he conducted using fruit flies. A replication of his study, however, doesn’t seem to align with his original conclusions about sexual selection. Findings of the study’s replication were published in June in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The article further bolstered the new findings in the study by highlighting a separate commentary on the topic written by Zuleyma Tang-Martínez, Founders Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

“The results of this study provide an unassailable argument that challenges Bateman’s,” Tang- Martínez wrote in the commentary published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She said that “at best, Bateman’s principles should be considered hypotheses and approached with great care.”

A UMSL optometry student examines a child's eyes during a Mobile Eye Center visit to a St. Louis-area school in this 2010 file shot. (Photo by August Jennewein)

Treating children isn’t always easy for optometrists. One of the most difficult aspects of the job is getting children to the office for a visit, according to the June issue of EyeCare Professional Magazine. Dr. Aaron Franzel, chief of binocular vision and pediatric services at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, told the magazine that parents tend to delay their child’s first eye exam due to confusion or misconceptions on how old the child should be.

“There will be educated parents who know they have risk factors for certain conditions, but they’re convinced or have been told that we can’t really measure visual skills until (children) know their letters and are confident,” Franzel said in the EyeCare Professional Magazine article. “I’m not exactly sure where that comes from, but it’s a difficult thing to overcome because we hear it all the time.”

In a conversation with UMSL Daily, Franzel discussed the appropriate age when a child should have his or her first eye exam. He pointed out that the American Optometric Association recommends an initial checkup at 6 months old, pariticular if visual risk factors are present. Both AOA and the InfantSEE program have laid out important vision development milestones parents can watch for in their child’s first year of life (AOA goes farther by outlining what to watch out for throughout a person’s entire life).

Franzel also discussed the usefulness of a play area in the pediatric clinic he manages on campus. He said in the magazine article that the area does more than entertain the children. Observing the children at play, he said, could provide valuable information for the eye exam.

“It really gives us a pretty good idea as to what they like to do, what they avoid, some of their visual habits, how does their head tilt or turn,” he told EyeCare Professional. “All of these things can be cues for us to look at specific things that may or may not have been picked up by the parent.”

Visit the EyeCare Professional Magazine website to read the entire article featuring Franzel. Call 314-516-5131 for more information about the pediatric offerings of the University Eye Center at UMSL.

UMSL archaeologist Michael Cosmopoulos has worked with students and volunteers for more than 10 years at an excavation site near the small town of Iklaina, Greece. (Photo courtesy of the Iklaina Project)

Each summer for more than a decade, University of Missouri–St. Louis archaeologist Michael Cosmopoulos has led an expedition of students and volunteers to an area in the middle of an olive grove in southwest Greece for hands-on experience they’re likely to never forget.

And this summer was no different. Cosmopoulos, the Hellenic Government Karakas Family Endowed Professor of Greek Studies at UMSL, and his team returned to the the site of Iklaina to conduct fieldwork. Archaeology magazine has written an extensive article about Cosmopoulos’ dig in its July/August issue. Visit the Archaeology website for a preview of the article, titled “The Birth of Bureaucracy” (click on “PREVIEW”).

One discovery made by Cosmpoulous and his team was named one of the top 10 discoveries of 2011 by the Greek press. The tablet is considered the oldest written record in Europe. His discovery of the tablet has been recognized among the top finds of the year.

Cosmopoulos’ article in Archaeology Magazine also merited a mention in Greek Reporter, which reports on Greek news from around the globe.

A transit of Venus was photographed in Hong Kong in 2004. The next transit of Venus will be June 5. The next one after that won't occur until 2117. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

A rare event will transpire in the sky June 5, and astronomers at the University of Missouri–St. Louis are inviting the public to watch.

The planet Venus will cross the face of the sun. It’s an occurrence that won’t repeat for more than a century – not until 2117.

“We will have a telescope set up with a solar filter on it for safe viewing,” said Erika Gibb, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UMSL. The viewing will start at 5 p.m. at the Richard D. Schwartz Observatory on the UMSL campus, weather permitting.

Gibb will be on hand to answer any Venus transit or general astronomy questions.

People watching the event will observe Venus as a black disk moving across the sun.

Gibb discussed the twice-in-a-lifetime event on St. Louis Public Radio | 90.7 KWMU. She also spoke to the St. Louis Post Dispatch and NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

The viewing event is free and open to the public, and children are welcome.

The Richard D. Schwartz Observatory is located at Florissant Road and Rosedale Drive on UMSL’s campus. For directions and information about the observatory click here.

UMSL alumnus Jim Virtel (right) was a recent contestant on "Jeopardy!" He's seen here with the show's host, Alex Trebek. (Photo courtesy of Jeopardy!)

University of Missouri–St. Louis alumnus Jim Virtel tested his trivia knowledge during a recent “Jeopardy!” appearance. And while he didn’t walk away a champ, he was happy with his third-place performance.

“It was exciting, and that’s all I hoped for. I’m happy with how I did,” Virtel told the Lemont (Ill.) Patch. He earned a master’s degree in philosophy from UMSL in 2010.

Virtel was in first place going into the “Final Jeopardy” round, but answered the question incorrectly. He finished third and took home $1,000 for appearing on the show.

The “Final Jeopardy” answer in the subject of “Military Matters” was: “In 1934 the lease for this place was increased to $4,085 per year; since 1959 the checks haven’t been cashed.”

Virtel guessed “Fort Knox.” The correct answer was “Guantanamo.”

Click here for a Q-and-A with Virtel on his “Jeopardy!” appearance.