Humanities & Society

Mark Manary, professor of pediatrics, assesses patients for malnutrition at a clinic in Malawi, Africa.An enriched peanut-butter mixture given at home is successfully promoting recovery in large numbers of starving children in Malawi, according to a group of researchers at the School of Medicine. Malnutrition affects 70 percent of all Malawian children with an estimated 13 percent of children dying from it before the age of five.

Psychiatry researchers at the School of Medicine have had good results in early research using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to treat patients with depression. Now they are testing TMS as a potential treatment for new mothers with post-partum depression.

Could higher gas prices mean trimmer waistlines?Just as rising gasoline prices are forcing many Americans to tighten their financial belts, new research suggests higher fuel costs may come with a related silver lining — trimmer waistlines. “An additional $1 in real gasoline prices would reduce obesity in the U.S. by 15 percent after three years,” suggests Charles Courtemanche, an economics researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker believes passionately that building strong communities takes individual effort and commitment, and he will explore that topic in detail for the Ervin Scholars 20th anniversary celebration at 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14, in the Laboratory Sciences Building auditorium. The talk, co-sponsored by the Assembly Series and the Campus Week of Dialogue, is free and open to the public.

Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker believes passionately that building strong communities takes individual effort and commitment, and he will explore that topic in detail for the Ervin Scholars 20th anniversary celebration at 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14, in the Laboratory Sciences Building auditorium. The talk, co-sponsored by the Assembly Series and the Campus Week of Dialogue, is free and open to the public. “How to change the world with your bare hands: A commitment to community” is the title of his talk and a motto Booker lives by. Inspired by his parents at an early age, he has dedicated his life to achieving social justice through individual action.

Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker believes passionately that building strong communities takes individual effort and commitment, and he will explore that topic in detail for the Ervin Scholars 20th anniversary celebration at 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14, in the Laboratory Sciences Building auditorium. The talk, co-sponsored by the Assembly Series and the Campus Week of Dialogue, is free and open to the public.

CraigSen. Larry Craig’s arrest for alleged gay overtures in a Minneapolis restroom may spell the end of his political career, but some in the lesbian, gay and bisexual community are hoping the scandal has a silver lining. “Regardless of Larry Craig’s true sexual orientation, the real story here is the extremes that some people must go through to hide their real self from a hostile society,” says James Reid, a clinical psychologist who studies sexual identity and prejudice at Washington University in St. Louis.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton was among a delegation of eight college and university presidents who traveled with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to Chile and Brazil last week (Aug. 18-24) to promote higher education partnerships and exchanges between the United States and Latin America.

The Fall 2007 Assembly Series parts with some of the traditions of the 54-year-old lecture series, while maintaining its mission of presenting to the Washington University community some of the most distinctive and vibrant voices of the day.

“With African-Americans and other minority groups having both problem and pathological gambling rates that are 2-3 times higher than Caucasian gamblers, accurate diagnosis is essential to treat gambling addiction,” says Renee Cunningham-Williams, Ph.D., a leading gambling addictions expert and visiting associate professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. In a first step to close this gap in care, Cunningham-Williams successfully led the development and testing of a new assessment tool, the Gambling Assessment Module, to determine the reliability of current pathological gambling disorder criteria.