Newsroom Stories

Patricia Wolff examines a young patient in her pediatric clinic in Cap Haitien, Haiti.Swollen bellies, orange hair, listlessness and dull eyes — these are the traits of child malnutrition in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and where roughly one of every three children is chronically malnourished. To try to change that statistic, Patricia Wolff, associate clinical professor of pediatrics, founded Meds & Food for Kids in 2004.

Patricia Wolff examines a young patient in her pediatric clinic in Cap Haitien, Haiti.Swollen bellies, orange hair, listlessness and dull eyes — these are the traits of child malnutrition in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and where roughly one of every three children is chronically malnourished. To try to change that statistic, Patricia A. Wolff, M.D., associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, founded Meds & Food for Kids (MFK) in 2004.

Many kids who may benefit from ADHD medications don’t get them.In contrast to claims that children are being overmedicated for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that a high percentage of kids with ADHD are not receiving treatment. In fact, almost half of the children who might benefit from ADHD drugs were not getting them.

Echocardiograms show that the thickness of left ventricular (LV) walls in the hypertrophied heart (left) are nearly twice that of the normal heart.”The heart is the single most energy-consuming organ per weight in the body,” says Lisa de las Fuentes, M.D. Under some conditions this energy-hungry organ is prone to defects in its energy metabolism that contribute to heart disease, according to research published in the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology by de las Fuentes and colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

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 fifteen-page opinion released this morning, Judge Charles B. Kornmann of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota ruled that the tribe’s courts had jurisdiction over the case and affirmed a 2003 verdict by a tribal jury awarding $875,982.46 in damages, interest, and costs to the aggrieved tribal members.

How would you remember this strange image?A psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis is shedding new light on strategies people use to learn and then remember images, showing that some techniques are more effective than others. Brenda Kirchoff, Ph.D., WUSTL research associate in psychology in Arts & Sciences, used functional magnetic reasonance imaging to identify four major learning and memory strategies that range from visual to verbal, each relying on different parts of the brain. The findings eventually may help provide behavioral modification treatments for individuals with memory impairment, including adults afflicted with age-related memory loss and early onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Constant blood flow shields the brain from cold, limiting the effects of any attempt to cool the brain.Attempts to cool the brain to reduce injury from stroke and other head trauma may face a significant obstacle: current cooling devices can’t penetrate very deeply into the brain. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that blood flow in the brain creates a “cold shielding” effect and have developed a method for calculating brain temperature that may be used to improve brain cooling techniques.

David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoLars Angenent with an earlier model of his microbial fuel cell. An advance in the design has increased the power output by a factor of 10. Hopes are that the fuel cell can be scaled up even more and function as a viable energy form.In the midst of the worldwide energy crisis, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have been continuing their work on a microbial fuel cell that generates electricity from wastewater. Advances in the design of this fuel cell in the last year have increased the power output by a factor of 10 and future designs, already in the minds of the researchers, hope to multiply that power output by 10 times again. If that goal can be achieved, the fuel cell could be scaled up for use in food and agricultural industries to generate electrical power – all with the wastewater that today goes right down the drain.

Maki & Associates, TokyoSaligman Family Atrium, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual ArtsIn 1960 a young Japanese architecture professor named Fumihiko Maki completed his first-ever commission while teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. Four decades later, Maki is among the world’s premier architects, a Pritzker Prize-winner renowned for creating monumental spaces that fuse Eastern and Western sensibilities. Current projects include both the $330 million United Nations expansion in Manhattan and Tower 4 at the former World Trade Center site. Now Maki has returned to Washington University as architect of the new Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, a dramatic, light-filled structure that will showcase the university’s internationally renowned art collection.

David KilperAs fall quickly approaches, so does the time for which many parents and students have long been waiting — some would say, dreading — the first day of college. Your child’s departure for college is a monumental step and one that you can start preparing for when your child is just taking his or her first steps, says a Washington University in St. Louis expert on the college experience.