Humanities & Society

November Business, Law & Economics Tip Sheet

November Culture & Living Tip Sheet

George Eberle, former president and chief executive officer of Grace Hill Settlement House and Health Center, will lecture on “The Impact of Professionalism and Elitism on Neighborhood Capacity Building From the Settlement House Perspective” at 1:10 p.m. Oct. 30 in Brown Hall Lounge. The lecture is co-sponsored by Grace Hill and the George Warren Brown School of Social Work in honor of Grace Hill’s 100th anniversary. After Eberle’s keynote address, there will be a panel discussion featuring representatives from the United Way, Urban Strategies Inc., the St. Louis community and GWB.

BernsteinNeil Bernstein, an expert in labor law and legal issues relating to striking workers and a professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, analyzes the current state of the grocery strike in St. Louis and discusses the overall effectiveness of strikes with Mike Sampson of KWMU’s St. Louis on the Air on Oct. 27. Listen to the program from the KWMU Web site.

GriggsEconomic implications of the American Airlines decision to dramatically reduce flights from its St. Louis airport hub will be among the topics discussed in a free public forum on the “Future of the Airline Industry” to be held on campus Oct. 31. The discussion is timely since it comes one day before American Airlines plans to cut its St. Louis airport daily departing flights from 417 to 207. Keynote speaker is Michael Levine, a professor of law and management who directed federal airline deregulation efforts in the late 1970s and served as an executive at Northwest Airlines until 1999. Jan Druecker of the University of Illinois presents analysis on economic impact of job losses in region.

Stephen H. Legomsky, J.D., D.Phil, the Charles F. Nagel Professor of International and Comparative Law, has received a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant for a two-week human rights project in Suriname. The grant and project were at the initiative of the U.S. State Department.Legomsky will be in Suriname from October 22 through November 4, 2003. While there, he will give a series of lectures to students at the Anton de Kom University in Paramaribo, faculty members, government officials, judges, and NGO representatives, on the subject of the United Nations human rights protection system. The U.S. Embassy will also schedule meetings with the U.S. ambassador to Suriname, Surinamese government officials and judges, NGO representatives, and the national media.

“The recent strikes by grocery workers in Missouri, California and West Virginia are indicative of a general economic dissatisfaction that could potentially expand into a broader confrontation between labor and management,” says Neil Bernstein, an expert in labor law and legal issues relating to striking workers and a professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, is closely following the grocery strikes.

At the time of the first MRI scans, the turquoise color shows areas of the hippocampus in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease that are shaped differently than in healthy older people. Two years later, even more changes have occurred, represented by the purple color.Even when people have no symptoms, their brains already may be dotted with the plaques and tangles that characterize Alzheimer’s disease. As treatments to halt the progress of Alzheimer’s disease appear on the horizon, scientists are looking for new ways to identify Alzheimer’s-associated changes in the brain before cognitive decline begins. By examining brain images, researchers, led by John G. Csernansky, M.D., the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry, and Lei Wang, Ph.D., research associate in psychiatry, both at Washington University’s Silvio Conte Center for Neuroscience Research, found that the volume and shape of certain brain structures change in different patterns during Alzheimer’s disease than in healthy aging. They believe that someday using these imaging techniques may allow for earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, preferably before the most devastating symptoms appear.

Photo courtesy of Vanderbilt UniversityThe “CEO” in your brain appears to be concerned more about the consequences of your actions than how hard they are to produce. That is the implication of a detailed study of the neuronal activity in a critical area of the brain, called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), published in the Oct. 3 issue of the journal Science. The finding is important because the ACC plays a key role in disorders such as schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder in humans, suggests Joshua Brown, study co-author and WUSTL research associate in psychology.

U.S. Administration on AgingAging is a women’s issue because women provide the bulk of care and support to older adults.An aging parent wants to keep the car keys, while his adult daughter thinks he is a hazard to himself and others on the road. Or a widow who has lived in her home for 55 years refuses to move out, although her children worry that she’s too frail to manage the stairs. As more and more adult children face caring for their aging parents in the coming decades, an expert on the clinical psychology of aging says the key to dealing with these types of situations is to discuss them before they become a reality. “Don’t procrastinate,” says Brian D. Carpenter, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “Start the process of talking to your aging parents early — before a crisis.”