Author: Jim Dryden

Jonathan Drucker and Alok Kothari help Wash U Build raise more than $400 at its recent car wash.

Five individuals received the Graduate Student Senate’s Outstanding Faculty Mentor Awards at an April 8 ceremony.

Wild African baboons at rest.Investigators from several groups, including Washington University in St. Louis, have found that when it comes to risk of obesity, the food you eat may be less important than the exercise you get. The researchers studied the eating and exercise patterns of two groups of wild baboons in East Africa. Like most primates, one group has to wander and forage for food. The other group lives near a tourist lodge in Kenya; they get lots of their food from the garbage dump. Typically, baboons spend the majority of their day walking from place to place finding food. But the so-called “couch baboons” spent most of their day waiting for food to arrive at the dump and then eating that food. Some of those baboons also became obese and resistant to insulin, just like humans who eat too much and exercise too little.

Clifford

Because obesity is a chronic illness, long-term treatment is required to help obese patients make the lifestyle changes to lose weight and keep it off.Almost two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, and that figure is growing — both in size and number. People with medically significant obesity have a body weight that is more than 20 percent above normal. The reason it is called medically significant obesity is that weighing that much puts people at risk for heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and cancer. It also decreases quality of life. Researchers at Washington University’s Weight Management Center help patients lose weight safely and reduce long-term risks of obesity-related diseases by taking a long-term approach. Because obesity is a chronic disease, they believe short-term therapy will not be effective. Just as physicians would not want to treat a diabetic with insulin for four months and then stop the therapy, they say that beating obesity often requires continual care.

“Chat With the Chancellor”; MetroLink groundbreaking event; car wash benefits WU Build; Bear Necessities holding sale.

Campus Watch

Students Wei Wang (left) and Dongmei Chu discuss one of the displays at the Graduate Student Senate’s 8th Annual Graduate Research Symposium.

Conevery Bolton Valencius, Sharon Chinault, Vivek Mittal, Christina Jacobsen, Andrew Bowman, Xuhui Zeng, Mara Chavolla, Franck Aimond, Sandeep Jain, Muslum Akgoz, Angela Ferguson, Alan Shiels, Steven M. Rothman,

School of Medicine researchers have shown that an enzyme that allows cancer cells to divide endlessly in the laboratory may also help them resist radiation and chemotherapy.