Newsroom Stories

By all expectations, it shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. A combination of bone marrow transplantation and gene therapy greatly lengthened the lives of laboratory mice doomed by a rapidly progressing, fatal neurodegenerative disorder also found in people. The School of Medicine researchers who made the discovery set out with low hopes for the combination therapy because on its own, each treatment was only modestly effective for the sick mice.

Rafia ZafarRafia Zafar, Ph.D., professor of English, of African & African American studies and of American culture studies, all in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture abroad during the 2007 spring semester. She has been awarded the distinguished Walt Whitman Chair, which includes teaching an advanced undergraduate course and a graduate seminar at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

In remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Society of Black Student Social Workers (SBSSW) at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work will host “Financial Freedom Seminar: Achieving Economic Independence Through Education,” Jan. 20 from 8:30 a.m.- 3 p.m. in Brown Hall. This free event is designed for members of the St. Louis community interested in building wealth, maintaining good credit, purchasing a home or starting a business. The deadline to register for this event is Jan. 15. “SBSSW’s goal is to present the King Holiday, not as a tradition or a history lesson, but as a call to action- to fight for economic and social justice,” says Charletra Hurt, SBSSW co-chair and first-year student at the School of Social Work.

Several events will be held on campus to mark the University’s 20th annual celebration honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Courtesy photoDaniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)Cutting-edge composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) and the string quartet section (SQ Unit) of his band, DBR & THE MISSION, will celebrate Black History Month with a rare performance of DBR’s A Civil Rights Reader at Washington University’s Edison Theatre Jan. 26. The evening will feature four of DBR’s string quartets celebrating four iconic figures from the American Civil Rights Movement: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Maya Angelou.

303 Gallery, New YorkCollier Schorr, *Lina, Opening Braid, Bettringen*Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Germany has reemerged as a potent intellectual and creative center within the international art world. In February 2007, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany, the first thematic museum exhibition to examine how contemporary artists have dealt — both directly and indirectly — with the social, economic and political ramifications of German unification.

MuslinAnthony Muslin has been named the Oliver M. Langenberg Distinguished Professor of the Science and Practice of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The professorship was established by the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation in recognition of Oliver M. Langenberg’s outstanding contributions to the foundation’s success. Langenberg serves as the foundation’s chairman of the board.

Cristina Greavu and Peter ElsbeckStudy for “A Neighborhood … Residence and Life” competitionCristina Greavu and Peter Elsbeck, both graduate students in architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, have earned an honorable mention as part of an international urban design competition sponsored by the High Commission for the Development of Arriyadh.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Stop smoking by phone (week of Jan. 3) • Bacteria’s role in obesity (week of Jan. 10) • Biochemical marker for sleep loss (week of Jan. 17) • Unsafe drivers with dementia (week of Jan. 24) • Genetic link to nicotine dependence (week of Jan. 31)

Class-action lawsuits can significantly slow or halt science’s ability to establish links between neurological illness and environmental factors produced by industry, a team of scientists and lawyers warns in the journal Neurology. The authors caution that litigation’s effects could seriously impair efforts to identify compounds that contribute to a wide variety of diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).