Newsroom Stories

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.

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.

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.

Courtesy imageJohn KinsellaAustralian poet John Kinsella will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, for the Writing Program Reading Series at Washington University in St. Louis. The reading is free and open to the public and takes place in Hurst Lounge, located on the second floor of Duncker Hall, in the northwest corner of Brookings Quadrangle, near the intersection of Hoyt and Brookings drives. For more information, call (314) 935-7130.

Despite their money-grubbing reputation, MBA students have more than their future paychecks on their minds. Through both school and student-driven initiatives, the Olin School of Business continues to provide ample proof that it fosters community responsibility in its students. In addition to the array of activities the business school is organizing to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, business school students are working to strengthen the St. Louis community as well. On Saturday, Sept. 10, current MBA students, alumni, faculty and staff from the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis are teaming up for the first annual Olin Serves Day.

A router in the new Open Network Laboratory, funded by NSF.A novel networking service has been made available to the research community by computer scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, enabling researchers and students remote, free use of the latest networking technology. Ultimately, the new Open Network Laboratory (ONL )can lead to innovations that can expand the capability of the Internet and other networking environments, said its director, Jonathan S. Turner, Ph.D., Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering, and professor of computer science and engineering at WUSTL.