Newsroom Stories

As our brains mature, we tend to use the red regions more frequently for these certain tasks, using the regions represented in blue less.Children activate different and more regions of their brains than adults when they perform word tasks, according to investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Reporting in the journal Cerebral Cortex, the researchers say those changes in regional brain activity from childhood to adulthood may reflect the more efficient use of our brains as we mature.

Adolescence can be a trying time for the whole family.Adolescence is characterized by dramatic physical changes as young people grow from childhood to physical maturity. During adolescence, we gain 50 percent of our adult weight and 20 percent of adult height while going through puberty and developing the ability to reproduce. With so many physical and emotional changes occurring at the same time, Washington University adolescent medicine researchers at St. Louis Children’s Hospital say it’s important for parents to be prepared for change. They also must be ready to listen to their children at any time, day or night, and do as much as possible to stay involved in their lives.

This is *C. elegans*. Its genome was thought to have been completed until a WUSTL computer scientist found otherwise.A computer scientist at Washington University in St. Louis has applied software that he has developed to the genome of a worm and has found 150 genes that were missed by previous genome analysis methods. Moreover, using the software, he and his colleagues have developed predictions for the existence of a whopping 1,119 more genes.

Carinne Blank has a method she uses to date ancient life forms that could be helpful for specimens from Mars.A geologist from Washington University in St. Louis is developing new techniques to render a more coherent story of how primitive life arose and diverged on Earth – with implications for Mars.

Mars Exploration Rover mission scientists remind us that the amazing success of the rovers *Spirit* and *Opportunity* is a harbinger for the day when humans inhabit the Red Planet.The major drawback to a human mission to Mars is preparing for the one to two years of radiation and microgravity exposure that astronauts must endure. While that is a large hurdle, enabling technologies are emerging that should be able to make this goal a reality over the next couple of decades, and America should go for it. That’s the theme of a report from NASA’s 2002 Astrobiology Academy appearing soon as a paper in Acta Astronautica.

Male Bahamas mosquitofish (left) chasing a female (right).A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that for some fish species, females prefer males with larger sexual organs, and actually choose them for mating. That does not exclude males with an average-sized sex organ, called a gonopodium. These fish out-compete the larger-endowed males in a predator-laden environment because they have a faster burst speed than the males with larger genitalia, thus avoiding predators and staying in the mating game.

GreenbaumStuart Greenbaum, dean of the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, will deliver his annual State of the School address at the Olin School’s Century Club Speaker series on Thursday, May 12 at 8 a.m.

St. Louis is the site for the world’s premier software engineering annual conference from May 15-21 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel. The 27th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2005) features the latest research in software engineering, displays, exhibits, seminars, co-located conferences, and social gatherings that bring the world’s elite together in an unprecedented hub of activity in information technology (IT) in the Gateway City. Gruia-Catalin Roman, Ph.D., Harold B. and Adelaide G. Welge Professor of Computer Science and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is the general chair for ICSE 2005 and was highly influential in bringing the conference to St. Louis,

For technicians in the Genome Sequencing Center (GSC) at the School of Medicine, work is going to go a whole lot faster — hundreds of times faster, in fact. Fast enough to sequence the entire genome of a bacterial organism in one day instead of several weeks.

Courtesy of Cell MetabolismMay ’05 coverWhere fat comes from determines whether the body can metabolize it effectively. Researchers at the School of Medicine have found that the “old” fat stored in the body’s peripheral tissues — that is, around the belly, thighs or bottom — can’t be burned efficiently unless “new” fat is eaten in the diet or made in the liver.