Newsroom Stories

Nearly all animals make sounds instinctively, but baby songbirds learn to sing in virtually the same way human infants learn to speak: by imitating a parent. Now, an international team of scientists, led by the School of Medicine, has decoded the genome of a songbird — the Australian zebra finch — to reveal intriguing clues about the genetic basis and evolution of vocal learning. 

Leading experts will convene for a discussion panel on “Labor and Migration Effects of Human Trafficking” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall. The panel, hosted by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Work and Social Capital, is co-sponsored by the Law & Culture Initiative and is free and open to the public.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, PhD, has been selected to give the 2010 Commencement address at Washington University in St. Louis, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. The university’s 149th Commencement will begin at 8:30 a.m. May 21 in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus.

A team of psychologists at Washington University that include graduate student Jonathan Jackson have found an intriguing possibility that personality and brain aging during the golden years may be linked.

There will be a year of festivities as the Department of Pediatrics celebrates its centennial April 1 to honor the milestones. Currently ranked eighth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, the Department of Pediatrics has become a world leader in pediatric patient care, teaching and research with its many groundbreaking discoveries and for its excellence in all divisions.

Bernard F. Schutz, PhD, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, will deliver the McDonnell Distinguished Lecture Wednesday, April 7. Schutz will give a talk titled “Gravitational Waves: Listening to the True Music of the Spheres” at 7 p.m.

Students build a replica of the Gateway Arch on the South 40 Swamp in the Wash U Build Extravanganza March 27. Ten teams of WUSTL undergraduates participated in the team-building exercise sponsored by the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

Clinicians may be able to better predict the effects of strokes and other brain injuries by adapting a scanning approach originally developed for the study of brain organization, neurologists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.

James Lennox, PhD, a prominent scholar of the history and philosophy of biology, will deliver the annual John and Penelope Biggs Lecture in the Classics for the Assembly Series at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium. This event, which is free and open to the public, originally was scheduled for April 8.

Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir will give a free concert covering American history through music at 8:15 p.m. Saturday, April 10, at the 560 Music Center.