Author: Ken Duenke

Cartoonist/artist/actress Lela Lee will be the featured speaker for the Assembly Series program at 4 p.m., Wednesday, February 11 in Graham Chapel. The event, sponsored by the Asian American Association, is free and open to the public.

Maxine Clark, chair, CEO and founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop, will respond to questions about entrepreneurship in today’s economy for the Assembly Series at 5 p.m. Feb. 5 in Graham Chapel.

Photo by David KilperBarbara Shrauner, Ph.D., senior professor of electrical and systems engineering, and Mark G. Alford, Ph.D., associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, review an exhibit from the first McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences Poster Session under way in the Earth & Planetary Sciences Building.

Researchers seeking ways to defeat malaria have found a way to get help from the parasite that causes the disease. Scientists at the School of Medicine stepped aside and let Plasmodium falciparum, one of the deadliest strains of malaria, do a significant portion of the genetic engineering work in their new study.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoFor the first time, WUSTL scientists have used gold nanocages to map sentinel lymph nodes in a rat noninvasively using photoacoustic tomography.

Half of the immune system has a hidden talent, researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered. They found the innate immune system, long recognized as a specialist in rapidly and aggressively combating invaders, has cells that can learn from experience and fight better when called into battle a second time. Scientists previously thought any such ability was limited to the immune system’s other major branch, the adaptive immune system.

Two international teams of researchers have made significant gains in understanding the genetic basis of psoriasis, a chronic skin condition that can be debilitating in some patients. Their research, involving thousands of patients, is reported in two studies published this week in the advance online Nature Genetics.

Build-A-Bear Workshop founder and CEO, Maxine Clark, will respond to questions about entrepreneurship in today’s economy at the 5 p.m. Assembly Series talk on Thursday, February 5 in Graham Chapel. The event is co-sponsored by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the Olin School of Business, as well as several organizations outside the University. Following the discussion at 6:15 p.m., Clark and Ken Harrington, the center’s managing director, will present the Olin Cup and a cash prize to the winning student team.

Washington University graduate student Kim Lorenz collects yeast samples from Pennsylvania oak trees as part of a project to analyze how genes interact to produce complex traits.In recent years, genetic studies have uncovered hundreds of DNA variations linked to common diseases, such as cancer or diabetes, raising the prospect that scientists can gauge disease risk based on information in an individual’s genome. But the variations identified to date only account for a small percentage – typically one to three percent – of the overall genetic risk of any common disease.

Speakers covering such diverse subjects as science, entrepreneurship, film and mathematics will take center stage during the Spring 2009 Assembly Series.