Newsroom Stories

These skulls, from victims of the Khmer Rouge, are on display in a Buddhist stupa at Choeung Ek, a mass burial site commonly known as one of “the killing fields.”Lessons learned from research into the societal effects of post-Apartheid “truth and reconciliation” hearings in South Africa are now being applied to a U.S. National Institute of Peace-sponsored study of the long-term mental health impact on Cambodians from human rights tribunals targeting the killing of millions by the nation’s former Khmer Rouge regime, says James L. Gibson, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of a study published Aug. 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Amidst the cultural and political ferment of the 1960s, avant-garde artists and architects began embracing biological and scientific models as well as the potentials of emerging technologies to explore radical new directions in urban design, developing projects that were at once fanciful, complex and conceptually serious. This fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Metabolic City, an exhibition surveying work by the British collective Archigram; the Japanese Metabolists (whose members include Fumihiko Maki, architect of the Kemper Art Museum); and the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, an early member of the Situationist International.

On Thursday, August 20th, business, faith and health care leaders from across the region will come together at the Family Care Health Center in St. Louis to give their perspective on why federal health care reform is important for Missouri. The speakers, including health care providers, educators, business owners and faith leaders, will each speak for several minutes and then make themselves available to answer media questions following the presentations.

When estrogen-lowering drugs no longer control metastatic breast cancer, the opposite strategy might work. Raising estrogen levels benefited 30 percent of women whose metastatic breast cancer no longer responded to standard anti-estrogen treatment, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions.

Tumor growth can start from stem cells in the gut, say researchers studying fruit flies at the School of Medicine. They found that tumors can grow from adult stem cells that have lost a specific tumor-suppressor gene. The gene, Apc, has previously been implicated in human gastrointestinal cancers, including colon cancer.

For teens with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and their families, the transition to young adulthood may be especially difficult. To better understand this issue and how best to address it, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has awarded a five-year grant to Paul T. Shattuck, Ph.D., assistant professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “This study will help us one day answer one of the most pressing issues in treating ASD,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. “Bridging the gap in health care, service use, and insurance coverage as these young people leave the school systems and enter adulthood may help prevent lapses in behavioral, social, and occupational skills that they and their families have worked so hard to achieve.”

Kouvelis Panos Kouvelis, a professor of operations and manufacturing management at the Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, has been named to the new position of senior associate dean and director of executive programs. From St. Louis to Shanghai, Olin offers a wide variety of executive education programs including the Executive MBA degree, topic-focused seminars and custom corporate learning programs. Kouvelis brings a rich background of teaching, research and consulting to this new position which is part of a larger strategic plan for continued growth and innovation in executive education.

The Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values at Washington University will close, effective June 30, 2010. Many of the programs and work on ethics and human values will transition over the next year to the schools and other parts of the University. The decision comes in the wake of significant shortfalls in […]

More than 1,400 Washington University freshmen will move into the South 40 residence halls on Thursday, Aug. 20. With help from family, friends and upperclassmen, the students will be hauling everything from refrigerators and microwaves to carpets, bicycles and stereo systems into their new homes away from home. Trucks, vans, U-Hauls and station wagons will line the South 40 driveways.

Margaret Bush Wilson, WUSTL trustee emerita, prominent civil rights attorney in the 1960s and the first woman of color to chair the board of directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, died Tuesday, Aug. 11, after a short illness. She was 90.