Newsroom Stories

MorrisStress appears to increase the severity of Alzheimer’s disease. That’s just one of more than 40 studies presented by Washington University researchers at the Alzheimer’s Association’s 9th International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders July 17-22 in Philadelphia. The University’s Alzheimer’s team is led by John C. Morris, M.D., principal investigator of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

OlsenToday, when you walk into a car dealer and order a new automobile, you pay the same price and get the same wait for delivery as every other customer. But in the future, as Tava Olsen sees it, instead you’ll select your price and delivery date from a dynamic menu of lead-times and prices, where you can pay more for quick delivery or get a better price for waiting. While such options benefit the customer, they also pay bottom-line benefits for the retailer and manufacturer, says Olsen, associate professor of operations and manufacturing at Washington University’s Olin School of Business. To help companies reap those benefits, she’s engaged in groundbreaking theoretical research funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to tell them just how to do it.

A new study shows spending on federal regulatory agencies exceeds the growth of the overall federal budget. Despite President Bush’s vow to limit discretionary spending to 3.9%, the 2005 Budget requests $39.1 billion in outlays for federal regulatory activities, a 4.2% real increase over the appropriated 2004 budget.

BarrackRobert L. Barrack, M.D., has been named the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the School of Medicine. He also will serve as chief of the Adult Reconstructive Surgery Service and chief of staff for orthopaedic surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Researchers discovered activity in a part of the brain called the extrastriate body both when subjects viewed body parts and when they pointed to an object.Although we don’t often think about it, the brain is a very complicated place. Even the simple act of pointing at an object requires an intricate network of brain activity. Scientists traditionally thought this network included a one-way “information highway” between the brain’s visual system and its motor and sensory systems, but research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis now challenges that long-held theory. The study demonstrates that the brain’s visual system is responsible not only for seeing and perceiving objects outside the body, but also is involved when individuals sense and manipulate their own bodies.

PowellSimon Powell, M.B. B.S., Ph.D., a cancer physician-scientist from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, has been appointed head of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

For decades, bicycles have been a recreational mainstay for youngsters, especialy during the summer months. Bikes can, however, become extremely dangerous and even deadly to the children who ride them. Robert Bo Kennedy, M.D., a WUSTL pediatrician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, outlines some dangers of bicycling and steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.

It’s a bug-eat-bug world found in this seemingly innocuous, surprisingly revealing, ecosystem.If you think your place is a dump, try living in a tree hole: a dark flooded crevice with years of accumulated decomposing leaves and bugs, infested with bacteria, other microbes, and crawling with insect larvae. A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has studied the ecosystem of the tree hole and the impact that three factors — predation, resources and disturbance — have on species diversity.

Removal of an immune system signaling protein prevents the development of a lupus-like condition in mice, researchers at the School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health have found.

Festival Hall at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition The World’s Greatest Fair, a feature-length documentary about the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, will premiere at St. Louis’ Fabulous Fox Theatre July 10, with additional screenings at the Tivoli Theatre July 12. The film, intended for national distribution, features several Washington University faculty and staff, including Steve Givens, Carol Diaz-Granados, Jeff Pike and Trebor Tichenor.