Newsroom Stories

Art Carlson, Ph.D., professor emeritus of accounting at the Olin School of Business, died Saturday, Jan. 14, 2006, while undergoing surgery to treat an infection that had spread throughout his body. Carlson was 82.

Courtesy photoMichel YangMichel Yang, the 2005-06 Marcus Artists for the Dance Program in Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences, will present an informal concert of improvisational works at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1. In addition, Yang will be in residence Jan. 27 to Feb. 1 to conduct a series of master classes with intermediate and upper-level dance students.

Renowned pianist Peter Martin will perform with drummer Maurice Carnes for Washington University’s Jazz at Holmes series from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26. A St. Louis native and graduate of University City High School, Martin has long resided in New Orleans but recently returned to St. Louis after his 100-year-old home was deluged in the Katrina flooding. He is currently featured with jazz singer Diane Reeves in the film Goodnight, and Good Luck.

The internal “skeleton” (in red) of cells is altered by exposure to high fat.Investigating the harmful health effects of excess fat, researchers at the School of Medicine have identified a protein that triggers death in mammalian cells overloaded with saturated fat. When the researchers halted production of the protein, the cells were able to thrive in ordinarily damaging amounts of saturated fat.

Influential civil rights expert and Harvard law professor Lani Guinier will deliver the Chancellor’s Fellowship keynote address at 11 am. January 25 in Graham Chapel. Her talk, “Meritocracy INC: How Wealth Became Merit, Class Became Race, and College Education Became a Gift from the Poor to the Rich,” coincides with the commencement of the Assembly Series’ spring installment. A panel discussion will be held at 2 p.m. in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge. Most Assembly Series lectures are held in Graham Chapel at 11 a.m. on Wednesdays, and all lectures are free and open to the public. For a complete schedule and up-to-date information, check the Web site at http://assemblyseries.wustl.edu or call 314-935-5285.

The ideal substance to prevent cancer would block tumor growth without causing unpleasant or dangerous side effects. Researchers at the School of Medicine now report that a compound related to vitamin A shows promise in preventing or slowing tumor growth in mice prone to lung cancer. The compound, called bexarotene, doesn’t cause the severe skin irritations that have limited the use of other vitamin A derivatives in cancer therapies.

Courtesy photoWashington University’s team: Shlomo Goltz, Nathan Heigert and Hubert CheungIn the world of advertising, the hardest thing to do is get people’s attention — a job that becomes exponentially harder as audiences diversify and traditional broadcasters compete with YouTube.com, MySpace.com and other online communities. So, rather than compete, companies are beginning to enlist those communities through what’s becoming known as “consumer-generated advertising.” This fall, a group of students from Washington University in St. Louis was one of five teams to make the finals of the “Chevy Super Bowl College Ad Challenge.” The winning team will be unveiled when its ad runs Feb. 4, during Super Bowl XLI. More…

The Washington University Chamber Orchestra will launch a yearlong celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with a concert at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23. The program will include Mozart’s popular Eine kleine Nachtmusik as well as the less familiar “Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546” and arias from several of his operas.

In 1995, a bus crash outside Kokstad, South Africa, left 12 schoolboys dead. Wild rumors swirled: the crash was caused by witches, the deceased made zombie slaves. In the weeks that followed, mobs executed two elderly women while local sangomas (traditional Xhosa shamans) tried to resurrect the boys. Such is the true story behind Ipi Zombi?, Brett Bailey’s exploration of the South African psyche, presented Jan. 27 to Feb. 5 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

Vegetables are a staple of calorie restriction diets.Eating a very low-calorie yet nutritionally balanced diet is good for your heart. Studying heart function in members of an organization called the Calorie Restriction Society, investigators at the School of Medicine found that their hearts functioned like the hearts of much younger people. The researchers report their findings in the Jan. 17 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.