Newsroom Stories

Photo by David KilperThe Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present a two-weekend run of “Measure for Measure,” one of Shakespeare’s most confounding “problem plays” that explores the nature of power, the relationships between men and women and the battle between justice and mercy.

Henry WebberHenry S. Webber, vice president for community and government affairs at the University of Chicago, will become executive vice chancellor for administration at Washington University in St. Louis, announced WUSTL Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. Webber’s appointment will be effective March 1, 2008.

ApteStudying a mouse model of age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in older Americans, scientists at the School of Medicine have found age is key in determining whether damaging blood vessels will form beneath the retina and contribute to vision loss. The scientists, led by principal investigator Rajendra Apte, discovered that specific immune cells called macrophages play a role in the disease process in older mice by failing to block the development of abnormal, leaky blood vessels behind the retina.

Timothy Trinidad leads a discussion with classmates (from left) David Schainker, Helena Wotring and Mamta Datwani. The students are part of a computer science engineering course taught by Burchan Bayazit, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science and engineering. The course stresses “active learning,” and features group work, presentation skill and critiques.Kenneth J. Goldman, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science and engineering, is the recipient of a $562,000 grant from the National Science Foundation that will enable his department to transform undergraduate teaching methodology. Goldman and his fellow principal investigators are working to cultivate “active learning” in the classroom, with a significant increase in studio courses that involve team projects and interdisciplinary collaboration. In a culture marked by frequent critique, students will refine their design skills, as well as improve their ability to present and justify their designs and work in groups. Passive learning, typified by the traditional lecture, will be put on the backburner, though the flame will still burn low.

Bill Michalski/WUSTL PublicationsA loan finances a young person’s education. Twenty years later, that child is working, contributing to the economy and paying off their loan. As they repay, the capitalized value of the loan pays back their debt to the previous generation in the form of a pension.Funding social security and education are often thought of as separate issues. But the two issues should be linked, says economist Michele Boldrin, the Joseph Gibson Hoyt Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. In the same way that younger generations take care of their elders as a kind of “return” on their parent’s investment, so too can the U.S. invest in the educational needs of its children and have the accumulated debt be paid off to retirees when it comes due.

Al Parker, *Mother and Daughter Skiing*The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections will launch the new Modern Graphic History Library with a pair of exhibitions that open Friday, Nov. 16. “Highlights from the Modern Graphic History Library” will open with a reception at 5:30 p.m. in Olin Library’s Ginkgo Reading Room & Grand Staircase Lobby. A reception for “Ephemeral Beauty: Al Parker and the American Women’s Magazine, 1940-1960” will immediately follow at 7 p.m. in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

Mouse embryos stained to show MOF (green) and its histone tag (red) demonstrate that MOF is essential for cell proliferation.To make tumors more sensitive to the killing power of radiation is a key aspiration for many radiation oncologists. Researchers at the School of Medicine have uncovered new information that leads them closer to that goal. In an upcoming issue of the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology, they report the first extensive study of an enzyme called MOF that helps control how DNA is packaged in cells. The researchers show that MOF is an essential factor for tumor development, and they say it may be possible to manipulate the enzyme to make tumors more sensitive to radiation therapy.

Brock ClarkeNovelist Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2007), will read from his work at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. The book — Clarke’s fourth — tells the darkly comic story of Sam Pulsifer, a literary bumbler who, at the age of 18, accidentally burns down the Emily Dickinson House in Amherst, Mass.

• Various lane closures are scheduled through Nov. 2.

Tom R. Miller, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology and of biomedical engineering, died Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007, at his home in Webster Groves. He was 63.