Newsroom Stories

College eating habits can pack on extra pounds.New work from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis confirms that most students gain weight in college. Reporting in the Journal of American College Health, the research team found that about 70 percent of students gained a significant amount of weight between the start of college and the end of sophomore year.

Nutritionist offers advice for packing a healthy lunch box.With childhood obesity and diabetes on the rise, more and more people are becoming aware of the need to eat more healthily and to get more exercise early in life. Considering most kids’ affinity for fast food and video games, directing them to a healthier lifestyle can be easier said than done. But, as kids head back to school, a nutritionist at Washington University in St. Louis offers advice to parents on packing a healthy lunch for their children — one that they will actually eat.

Welfare to work leaves some out in the coldThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 dramatically changed the nation’s welfare rules. The act ended low-income families’ entitlement to cash assistance and changed the welfare program from a system of income support to one based on work. “Unfortunately, one of the consequences of this legislation is that a segment of welfare recipients, probably the most disadvantaged group, left or were forced to leave welfare without having the proper means to live,” says Yunju Nam, Ph.D., assistant professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.

Researchers are trying to reduce the number of pills needed by AIDS patients.The public perception of AIDS treatment — a cocktail of many different pills taken several times a day and sometimes even in the middle of the night — has largely been erased in the United States thanks to advances in drug design and delivery. Although textbook treatment guidelines still call for patients to take a few AIDS medications twice a day, many patients in industrialized countries are now able to keep sufficiently high medication levels in their bodies with once-daily doses. Now researchers in an international collaborative that includes the Aids Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have begun an ambitious new study to see if this treatment paradigm can be implemented in Third World countries.

Outgrowth of nerve branchesA protein that helps the ends of growing nerve cells push forward is also involved in guidance of the nerve branches, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. They had believed that the protein, myosin II, was only a motor, but the new study shows it appears to help steer the nerve cells, too. By better understanding how nerve branches grow and move, the researchers hope one day to be able to regenerate injured nerves. They reported their findings in a recent issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Smoking can increase the risk of death from cervical cancer.Cervical cancer patients infected with either of two strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) were twice as likely to die of their disease as patients with other common strains of HPV, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In addition, smokers with these strains increased their risk of death even further. Nearly all cervical cancers are associated with HPV infection of the cervix.

College eating habits can pack on extra pounds.College students talk about the “Freshman 15.” That’s the typical number of credit hours a full-time student takes during a semester. Some also claim it’s the number of pounds students gain eating dorm food and studying all night. New work from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis confirms that most students do, indeed, gain weight in college. Reporting in the Journal of American College Health, the research team found that about 70 percent of students gained a significant amount of weight between the start of college and the end of sophomore year.

Listed below are this month’s featured news stories. • Daydreaming and Alzheimer’s (week of Sept. 7) • New insight into arthritis (week of Sept. 14) • Preventing wrong-site surgery (week of Sept. 21) • Intense hip fracture therapy (week of Sept. 28)

Ken BotnickUnsettled GroundLandscape. The word evokes mountain lakes and desert plains, rivers and trees and fields of green. Yet in present-day America, landscape has become an increasingly complex and divisive issue. Suburban development sprawls ever outward while many traditional urban cores crumble to rust and rubble. Once a nation of cities and farms, we now find ourselves confronting a frequently uneasy mixture of natural and postindustrial environments. On Sept. 19 and 20, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will host a national symposium titled “Unsettled Ground: Nature, Landscape, and Ecology Now!” Co-sponsored with the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, “Unsettled Ground” is the first in a yearlong series of lectures, panel discussions, artistic interventions and workshops exploring the intersection of contemporary architecture, art, ecology and urban design.

St. Louis saxophonist Freddie Washington, a popular mainstay of Gaslight Square clubs in the 1960s, will launch Washington University’s ninth annual Jazz at Holmes series with a performance from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 15.