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Culture & Living Tip Sheet

Medical Science & Health Tip Sheet

Ralph G. Dacey Jr. has been named this year’s recipient of the prestigious Grass Foundation Award from the Society of Neurological Surgeons.

School of Medicine Employee Appreciation Day Picnic held June 13.

O’SullivanAn electrical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has devised a theory that sets the limits for the amount of data that can be hidden in a system and then provides guidelines for how to store data and decode it. Contrarily, the theory also provides guidelines for how an adversary would disrupt the hidden information. The theory will have a major impact on homeland security applications.

Experimental economics — a fast-growing branch of economics that involves the creation of a microeconomic environment in a laboratory — is being widely used at the John M. Olin School of Business. Applications of the experimental research have multiplied, spanning many industries and producing results that have impacted everything from how airlines price their tickets to how companies manage their employees. Ronald R. King, Ph.D., is helping to lead the burgeoning new area of research at the business school.

Carrying backpacks the right wayAs parents and kids make their lists for the August back-to-school sales, one item to consider should be a backpack — on wheels, says Nancy J. Bloom, Ph.D., a physical therapy instructor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Kids backs are primarily bearing the weight of their schoolbooks. Bloom says that because young bones are growing all the way through high school, heavy backpacks need to be a major concern. She notes that there are a few important things that kids can do to avoid injury, including carrying their backpacks over both shoulders to balance the load.

ZengerIt takes more than a firm handshake to guarantee trust in any business relationship that’s going to last. In empirical research recently published in Strategic Management Journal, Olin School of Business Professor of Organization and Strategy Todd R. Zenger completed an in-depth survey of senior corporate managers that confirms his suspicions about the importance of contracts in generating trust.

Lowry explores the dynamics behind efforts to restore rivers.As America celebrates the bicentennial of Lewis & Clark’s epic journey up the untamed Missouri River, the nation finds itself on the verge of a new era in modern river management, one in which proponents of environmental protection and ecosystem restoration stand on equal footing with those of the hydropower, barge and boating industries. In a new book, Dam Politics: Restoring American Rivers (Georgetown University Press, 2003), noted environmental politics expert William R. Lowry explores the dynamics behind recent efforts to restore American river systems to a more pristine state. The politics of river restoration run deep, and it is politics, argues Lowry, that will ultimately dictate the success or failure of future efforts to restore and preserve the nation’s riverways.

Cells afflicted with SARS.Rapid and accurate diagnosis is critical for providing optimum care for patients with SARS and for helping contain the disease and protecting the community. If someone with a severe respiratory illness comes to Barnes-Jewish Hospital or St. Louis Children’s Hospital, emergency department physicians now should be able to tell whether the disease is SARS within a few hours. A team of researchers, led by Michael J. Holtzman, M.D., the Selma and Herman Seldin Professor of Medicine and professor of cell biology and physiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, developed a diagnostic tool that allows for quick identification of whether a person with respiratory disease has SARS. They also can determine the severity of the infection, and the test can detect the SARS virus even if very few virus molecules make it into the test sample.