Retired NFL players use painkillers at four times the rate of the general population, according to new research conducted by investigators at the School of Medicine. The researchers say the brutal collisions and bone-jarring injuries associated with football often cause long-term pain, which contributes to continued use and abuse of pain-killing medications. FULL STORY

URL: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/21789.aspx

WUSTL has received a three-year, $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a series of five “Vertical Seminars” in the humanities. The seminars are part of a pilot program to introduce an innovative format of collaborative research, called “The Vertical Seminar,” to the humanities. “The Vertical Seminar” will include scholars of different levels — dissertation students, postdoctoral fellows and junior and senior faculty — working together to examine a series of overarching questions in the humanities. FULL STORY

URL: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/21802.aspx

Most people don’t think highly of pond scum, but for Susan Dutcher, PhD, professor of genetics and of cell biology and physiology at the School of Medicine, the single-celled green algae Chlamydomonas are incredible creatures worthy of her life’s work. FULL STORY

URL: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/21755.aspx

Using a sophisticated version of the stroboscopic photography a pioneering photographer used in 1877 to prove that a horse takes all four hooves off the ground when it gallops, Michael L. Gross, PhD, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences and of medicine and immunology in the School of Medicine, catches proteins in the act of folding. FULL STORY

URL: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/21665.aspx

Yvonne Sparks, senior manager of community development for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, delivers the keynote address for the fifth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Recovering From the Recession, Reaching for the Future” Jan. 22 in Brown Hall. The Society of Black Student Social Workers at the Brown School hosted the seminar in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. FULL STORY

URL: http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/21807.aspx

• Noon. CNISS Lecture. Spring 2011 Money and Politics Speaker Series. “Interest Groups in Politics.” Murray Weidenbaum, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor, Dept. of Economics. Sponsored by The Center for New Institutional Social Sciences. Seigle Hall, Weidenbaum Center Conf. Rm. 170. RSVP to cniss@artsci.wustl.edu or (314) 935-5068.

• Buder Center to host trivia night. The Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the Brown School will host a “Roaring Twenties” trivia night at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11, in Brown Hall Lounge. Tables of 8-10 players are available for $20 per person. In addition to the trivia competition, a silent auction will be held throughout the week of Feb. 7-11 in Room 336 of Goldfarb Hall.

• Home cooking. Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams played at home this weekend, hosting University Athletic Association foes Carnegie Mellon University Jan. 28 and Case Western Reserve University Jan. 30. Find out if home cooking helped either team by visiting bearsports.wustl.edu.