Newsroom Stories

A computer simulation of a nanoparticle showing its core of perfluorocarbon (green) and its lipid coating (red, orange and blue).When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at the School of Medicine. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.

Live performance has always been a multidisciplinary event, its three great streams — theater, music and dance — forever shifting and combining in new and unpredictable ways. For its 2009-10 season, the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present a handful of works that together highlight both the boundless possibility and transformational power of the stage.

ChenSchool of Medicine researchers have discovered that itch-specific neurons exist in mice, and their studies suggest that itch and pain signals are transmitted along different pathways in the spinal cord.

Dripping or flinging paint; flipping coins to compose musical scores; letting the progressive decay of organic materials determine a composition — since the early 20th century avant-garde artists have used these processes and many others to explore the creative possibilities of chance and its attendant release of authorial intent. This fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Chance Aesthetics, a major loan exhibition investigating the use of chance as a key compositional principle in modern art.

Decoding the complete DNA of cancer patients is giving scientists at the School of Medicine a clearer picture of the complexity of the disease and allowing them to see intriguing and unexpected genetic relationships among patients.

Buy fresh fruits and vegetables from area growers right on the School of Medicine campus. A farmer’s market will be held weekly beginning Thursday, Aug. 13 from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the fountain plaza outside of the Barnes & Noble bookstore.

Adults with severe hearing loss benefit from pairing a cochlear implant in one ear with a hearing aid in the other ear, even though the sound signals from each device are very different, according to a study at the School of Medicine published in the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology.

Students who learn history by watching historically based blockbuster movies may be doomed to repeat the historical mistakes portrayed within them, suggests a new study from Washington University in St. Louis. Findings suggest showing popular history movies in a classroom setting can be a double-edged sword when it comes to helping students learn and retain factual information in associated textbooks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has designated the Center for Violence and Injury Prevention (CVIP) at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis as one of its newest Injury Control Research Centers (ICRC). Preventing child maltreatment, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, suicide and related injuries through community-based research and educational outreach is the goal of the Brown Center for Violence and Injury Prevention. The center is led by Melissa Jonson-Reid, Ph.D., associate professor at the Brown School. John Constantino, M.D., the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Washington University School of Medicine, serves as co-director.

Parkinson’s disease is well-known for impairing movement and causing tremors, but many patients also develop other serious problems, including sleep disturbances and significant losses in cognitive function known as dementia. Now researchers at the School of Medicine have modeled Parkinson’s-associated dementia for the first time.