Newsroom Stories

Washington University — consistently ranked among America’s 20 best national universities — is ranked 12th again for undergraduate programs among the nation’s best 248 national universities by U.S. News & World Report, the magazine announced Aug. 17. The University tied with Cornell University for the second year in a row.

Fernando Arias, M.D., Ph.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology and head of the division of maternal-fetal medicine from 1974-1982, died Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007, in Maumee, Ohio, of complications from cancer. He was 73.

The School of Medicine has joined the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC), an organization of 13 leading U.S. academic centers designed to speed the development of new myeloma therapies. Washington University School of Medicine serves as a major center for multiple myeloma treatment and research in the St. Louis area.

More than 1,300 Washington University freshmen will move into the South 40 residence halls on Thursday, Aug. 23. 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.

Mice developed in the laboratory of Zhou-Feng Chen don’t experience relief from pain when given opiate drugs such as morphine.For the first time, pain researchers at the School of Medicine have shown that it’s possible to separate the good effects of opiate drugs such as morphine (pain relief) from the unwanted side effects of those drugs (tolerance, abuse and addiction). The investigators, led by Zhou-Feng Chen, Ph.D., associate professor of anesthesiology, psychiatry and molecular biology and pharmacology, report their results online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They found that opiates like morphine don’t relieve pain as well in mice genetically engineered to lack neurons that produce a neurotransmitter called serotonin in the central nervous system.

Researchers hoping to better understand the development of the infant brain have long been stymied by a formidable obstacle: babies just don’t want to sit still for brain scans. “There have been some studies that obtained brain scans of infants while they were napping or sedated, but what we’d really like to do is to scan their brains when they’re sitting on a parent’s lap, seeing new things, hearing new words and interacting with the environment,” says Joseph Culver, Ph.D., assistant professor of radiology at the School of Medicine.

Researchers inspect a Lahar flow – a mix of water and rock fragments that looks like moving concrete – near the Tungaruhua volcano close to Banjos, Ecuador. The flow killed three people and shut down access to the road to Banjos in a 2006 eruption.A geologist at Washington University in St. Louis is doing his part to make sure that the small Latin American country of Ecuador follows the Boy Scout motto: Be prepared. Robert Buchwaldt, Ph.D., Washington University lecturer in earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, is the only scientist from America who sits on an international committee that is seeking ways to address the volcanic threat in Ecuador, especially in Quito, a city of five million nestled against the volcano Guagua Pichincha, which erupted just two years ago.

In their quest to reduce air pollution, states are implementing new and easier ways to ensure that automobiles are both safe and environmentally friendly. Some states, like Missouri, allow private repair shops to conduct both safety and emissions tests simultaneously, making it easier for car owners to renew their license plates. But there’s a potential problem with the new plan, according to a business professor at Washington University in St. Louis: repair shops have very strong incentives to cheat, but not in a way that helps reduce pollution.

Peter Campus, *Prototype for Interface*Groundbreaking video artist Peter Campus will join curators Sabine Eckmann and Lutz Koepnick for a panel discussion relating to the exhibition Window | Interface at 6 p.m. Aug. 31. Co-curated by Eckmann and Koepnick and featuring works by Campus, the exhibition explores the ways in which electronic windows and interfaces — for example, video screens, computer monitors and cell phone displays — have come to structure the practice and experience of art today.

Below is a link to the Washington University news release about the U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings for 2004-05: http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/3627.html To view a full listing of U.S. News magazine, book and Web-only rankings for 2004-05, please visit the U.S. News & World Report site: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankindex_brief.php