Humanities & Society

Anthrax is nasty stuff. An environmental engineer at WUSTL uses smart catalysts in his device that can detect the presence of airborne anthrax and disable it.An environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis with his doctoral student has patented a device for trapping and deactivating microbial particles. The work is promising in the war on terrorism for deactivating airborne bioagents and bioweapons such as the smallpox virus, anthrax and ricin, and also in routine indoor air ventilation applications such as in buildings and aircraft cabins.

A fluroescent-tagged antibody bearing silver and gold particles reveals I and L bradykinin receptors lit in a ghostly green glow on the surfact of cultured human cellsPreliminary research suggests it may someday be possible to diagnose and forecast risk for Alzheimer’s disease using skin cells, thanks to a small protein, or peptide, that few previously associated with the disease. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that skin cells from people with inherited forms of Alzheimer’s disease respond to the peptide by triggering Alzheimer’s-like changes, but skin cells from healthy individuals do not. They say the findings need to be explored further in cases of non-inherited Alzheimer’s disease, but the results could eventually lead to a way of determining an individual’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s before clinical symptoms arise.

March Culture & Living Tip Sheet

Business, Law & Economics March Tip Sheet

James W. Ellis, the National Law Journal‘s 2002 Lawyer of the Year, will deliver the keynote address during the School of Law’s fourth annual Access to Equal Justice conference, “Mental Health and the Law,” March 19 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall.

Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein of Jordan will deliver a lecture on “The International Criminal Court: Future Challenges,” on March 18 at noon in Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 309. Al-Hussein is the permanent representative of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the United Nations and president of the Assembly of States Parties for the International Criminal Court.

The former HUD Secretary and founder of a private organization to help the homeless will look at America through social workers’ eyes and offer hope for the socially marginalized.

Washington University faculty and staff make news around the world. Following is a representative sampling of media coverage from clippings and electronic sources. For the most recent clips, see the Clips Index

Washington University faculty and staff make news around the world. Following is a representative sampling of media coverage from clippings and electronic sources.

FlinnOn Feb. 27, the John Jay School of Criminal Law will release its report on the abuse of minors by priests from 1950 to 2002. Those who have seen it, claim the report will demonstrate that roughly 4,500 priests abused 11,000 minors during that time and that the abuse took place in 70 out of 90 dioceses in America. Frank K. Flinn, Ph.D., professor of religious studies at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on the Catholicism, claims that the sex-abuse scandal is “far-and-away the most serious crisis to confront the American Catholic Church in its entire history.”