Newsroom Stories

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is bringing together a distinguished group of scientists, legal scholars, jurists and philosophers from across the country to help integrate new developments in neuroscience into the U.S. legal system.

The pedestrian bridge over Forest Park Parkway on the Danforth Campus will be closed Oct. 18-22 to allow Metro to install a protective deck coating on the bridge.

J. Dillon Brown, Ph.D., Bill Bubelis, Ph.D., Sudarshan Jayaraman, J. Lamar Pierce, Ph.D., And more…

The Tamm Avenue bridge is scheduled to open Oct. 20.

Two Olin Business School students won the top prize in an international marketing plan competition. Seniors John Ludeke and Rebecca Tucker were recognized for their marketing plan to curb childhood obesity in a ceremony Oct. 15 at the Marketing Agencies Association Worldwide Globes Awards ceremony at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

This year Founders Day attendees will get a two-for-one bonus when the powerful political couple Mary Matalin and James Carville deliver the keynote address. Matalin and Carville, top political strategists for the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, and married since 1993, will appear at the Alumni Association’s annual gathering to commemorate the founding of Washington University at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 3 at the America’s Center in downtown St. Louis.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Bright tumors, dim prospects (week of Oct. 3) • New drugs for Parkinson’s (week of Oct. 10) • Heart disease in the mentally ill (week of Oct. 17) • Preventing plaque buildup (week of Oct. 24) • Helping children lose weight (week of Oct. 31)

Children who are obese or who are at risk for obesity show early signs of heart disease similar to obese adults with heart disease, a study by researchers at the School of Medicine has found. “Based on this study, these subtle markers can help us predict who could be at risk for heart disease and heart attacks,” said Angela Sharkey, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and a pediatric cardiologist at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

A psychiatrist at the School of Medicine writes in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that although mortality from cardiovascular disease has declined in the United States over the past several decades, patients with severe psychiatric illness are not enjoying the benefits of that progress.

WUSTL senior Ruth Poland and Jonathan Chase, Ph.D., associate professor of biology and director of WUSTL’s Tyson Research Center, check species out in one of Tyson’s ponds.An ecologist at Washington University in St. Louis has discovered that after ponds dry up through drought in a region, when they revive, the community of species in each pond tends to be very similar to one another in species composition.