Newsroom Stories

Stepping out of your own head might seem like the last thing one would want to do to avoid tripping and falling, but neuroscientists who study the brain’s navigation and orientation systems recognize this change of perspective as a necessity. To successfully orient yourself and move about the environment, you have to look at the world both from the viewpoint of your own sensory organs, which are fixed in your head and body, and from the viewpoint of your relationship to the space around you and to the force of gravity.

The School of Law’s American Indian Law and Economic Development Program and the St. Louis law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal have garnered an important legal victory concerning the sovereignty of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. Working with local attorneys in South Dakota, they helped the tribe defend a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of the tribe’s courts to hear a discrimination case brought by tribal members against a non-Indian bank doing business on the reservation. In a twenty-one-page opinion released on June 26, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a 2003 discrimination verdict by a tribal jury awarding nearly a million dollars in damages, interest, and costs to the aggrieved tribal members.

Graham Colditz and the Your Disease Risk Web siteA few clicks of the mouse tell visitors to the “Your Disease Risk” Web site their risk for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and osteoporosis. The Siteman Cancer Center at the School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital recently launched this easy-to-use tool, which offers a wealth of information about risk factors and prevention strategies for five prominent diseases affecting millions of Americans.

A new brace that maintains correction for clubfoot, a birth defect in which the foot is turned in toward the body, has shown better compliance and fewer complications than the traditional brace used to treat the condition. Matthew B. Dobbs, M.D., associate professor of orthopedic surgery at the School of Medicine, designed the new dynamic brace, called the Dobbs brace, to allow active movement, preserve muscle strength in the foot and ankle and be less restrictive to the child than the traditional brace.

The School of Law’s American Indian Law and Economic Development Program and the St. Louis law firm of Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal have garnered an important legal victory concerning the sovereignty of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. Working with local attorneys in South Dakota, they helped the tribe defend a federal lawsuit challenging the authority of the tribe’s courts to hear a discrimination case brought by tribal members against a non-Indian bank doing business on the reservation. In a twenty-one-page opinion released on June 26, The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a 2003 discrimination verdict by a tribal jury awarding nearly a million dollars in damages, interest, and costs to the aggrieved tribal members.

James RichardsThe Gateway Festival Orchestra will begin its 44th season of free Sunday-evening performances with “All American,” a concert highlighting the varied genre of this country’s music — from classical works to patriotic tunes and the music of Hollywood and Broadway. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. July 8 in Washington University’s Brookings Quadrangle. Subsequent concerts take place July 15 and 22 in Brookings Quadrangle and July 29 in Graham Chapel.

When then-students Jason Hill and Leon Scott performed a spoken word piece about health disparities and the roles of physicians during the 2004 Medical School class show, the audience was captivated by what became the highlight of the show. So when fourth-year student Kathy Lee was planning a training conference on preventing hepatitis B, she recruited Hill and Scott to create a spoken word performance piece. Spoken word is an innovative performing art that intertwines elements of rap and poetry.

(Left to right) Damien Fair, Binyam Nardos, Sam Craig, Rahel Nardos, and Tracy Nicholson show the books delivered to medical students in Ethiopia.Several student groups and administrators at the School of Medicine and residents at Barnes-Jewish Hospital have collected nearly 500 medical textbooks to help their counterparts in Ethiopia. The textbooks will replace outdated books at the medical school at Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa University, the main teaching hospital in the country’s capital city. Rahel Nardos, a native of Ethiopia and a fourth-year resident, came up with the idea after spending a week working in Addis Ababa University’s hospital last year.

In a unanimous decision, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that tissue and blood samples donated to the School of Medicine for prostate cancer research belong to the institution. The three-judge panel said the donors voluntarily made a gift to Washington University when they donated their biological samples and, therefore, the specimens belong to the school.

Ramanath Cowsik, Ph.D., one of the world’s pre-eminent astrophysicists, has been named director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Cowsik, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, will take over as director July 1. He succeeds Roger J. Phillips, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, who is stepping down after seven years as director.