Newsroom Stories

“The Tenth Circuit’s decision upholding the constitutionality of the ‘Do Not Call’ registry is a straightforward application of the Supreme Court’s commercial speech jurisprudence, but this may not be the end of the ‘Do Not Call’ list cases,” says Neil M. Richards, an expert in the fields of privacy law and constitutional law and an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s likely that the telemarketers will petition the Supreme Court to take the case, and I think there’s at least some chance that the Supreme Court might hear it,” he says. “Supreme Court commercial speech doctrine is confusing, and this would be an opportunity to clear up some of the confusion.”

As the spotlight focusing on same-sex marriage in the United States continues to brighten, the issue is affecting more than the gay and lesbian couples desiring to obtain marriage licenses. “The rapid progress we are seeing on this issue is changing how some gay and lesbian youth are envisioning their own futures,” says Diane Elze, Ph.D., an assistant professor of social work at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “They are beginning to see marriage as an option for themselves — not just traveling to Vermont for a civil union, or having a commitment ceremony, or acquiring domestic partnership benefits from their employer, but some of them can now imagine themselves as future married persons.”

Photo by David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoRecent Washington University graduate Glenn K. Davis reads to children at Ford Elementary School in St. Louis.As President Bush’s struggling No Child Left Behind Act heats up as a presidential campaign issue, the achievement gap in American schools continues to widen. Can we ever hope to close the racial, ethnic and economic gaps in schools? An education researcher at Washington University in St. Louis thinks it is possible — we just need to think of the achievement gap in different terms.

Anthrax is nasty stuff. An environmental engineer at WUSTL uses smart catalysts in his device that can detect the presence of airborne anthrax and disable it.An environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis with his doctoral student has patented a device for trapping and deactivating microbial particles. The work is promising in the war on terrorism for deactivating airborne bioagents and bioweapons such as the smallpox virus, anthrax and ricin, and also in routine indoor air ventilation applications such as in buildings and aircraft cabins.

To meet design and cost changes, industry and government are considering clockless computing.Computing royalty, including Ivan Sutherland, the father of computer graphics, and Wesley A. Clark, the designer of the world’s first personal computer, will gather at a computing symposium Friday, March 26th, 2004, from 1:00-5:30 p.m. at Washington University in St. Louis’s Whitaker Hall Auditorium. As part of the University’s 150th anniversary of its founding, participants will honor time by contemplating how computing can evade time as the industry prepares to go clockless.

Strong stitches attach the rotator cuff directly to the shoulder bone.Each year in the United States, nearly 300,000 people have surgery to repair their rotator cuff. The rotator cuff is made up of several muscles that allow us to lift our arms or to rotate them during sports activities such as golf, tennis and swimming. The rotator cuff also is used during lifting, washing windows and working in the garden. In the past, surgical correction of the rotator cuff involved an incision through the deltoid muscle on the outside of the shoulder, a lot of pain for weeks after surgery and a long period of recovery. But Washington University orthopaedic surgeons have begun using a minimally invasive system that eliminates the need for the incision through the muscle and limits the amount of post-operative pain. The system allows surgeons to strengthen the repair with a suturing device that sews the muscle right into bone where it can heal more quickly, with less pain.

David Hadas, Ph.D., professor of English in Arts & Sciences, died March 3, 2004 at his home in St. Louis of complications from cancer. He was 73. Hadas, who had taught at the University since 1964, will be most remembered for his “The Bible as Literature” class, which was very popular with students.

BroadPhilanthropist Eli Broad, named one of the top art collectors in the world by ArtNews and Art and Antiques magazines, will speak on Thirty Years of Collecting at 5 p.m. Monday, March 8, at the Washington University Gallery of Art.

March Science & Technology Tip Sheet

Medical Science & Health March Tip Sheet.