Newsroom Stories

Changes in regional brain activity from childhood to adulthood may reflect more efficient use of the brain as it matures.

It’s part of the ninth annual Nationwide Asthma Screening Program; the condition is responsible for nearly 4,500 deaths each year.

Games, activities and an awards ceremony will honor and thank staff for their contributions to the University’s success.

One of 16 scholars selected in this highly competitive fellowship program, he’ll study themes focusing on Islam & the modern world.

The cycle for health benefits enrollment will now run on the calendar year instead of the University’s fiscal year.

EckmannSabine Eckmann, Ph.D., will become director of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis effective July 1, 2005, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced today. Eckmann joined the Kemper Art Museum as curator in fall 1999 and also regularly teaches seminars in the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences. She succeeds Mark S. Weil, Ph.D., the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts, who has led the museum since 1998. Weil, a longtime faculty member in art history, will retire June 30.

Genes respond to chemo drugOncologists aren’t sure exactly why patients with the same cancer often respond very differently to the same treatment, but a growing body of evidence suggests the answer lies somewhere in the genes. Now researchers at the School of Medicine have become the first to profile the activity of whole sets of genes involved in processing chemotherapeutic drugs.

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.

The Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences has announced winners for the 2005 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition. Four student plays were selected in two categories. Full-length winners were Highness, by junior Carolyn Kras, and Shades of Light Blue, by junior Yuan Ji. Flick, by freshman Nicholas A. Loyal, and Chosen Family, by freshman Nick Rogers, won for short plays.

The urban legends about managed care convey a sense that managed care often leads to early death. However, the business methods employed by managed care frequently result in reduced cost for the companies and the individuals enrolled in the programs. Because of the potential savings, the trend has been to encourage Medicare enrollees to use managed care programs. A recent study by a professor in the business school Washington University in St. Louis and a colleague suggests that it’s not managed care that increases mortality; it’s lack of drug coverage. The study suggests that a one percent increase in the number of people enrolled in Medicare Managed Care without drug coverage would result in an additional 5,100 deaths among the elderly population of the United States in one year.