Newsroom Stories

“Rotation 1: Contemporary Art from the Peter Norton Gift” opens Friday, May 1 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The exhibition will offer St. Louis museum-goers their first chance to view highlights from a major recent gift by the renowned arts philanthropist and software entrepreneur.

Scientists have long suspected that respiratory viruses play a critical role in the development of chronic lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Studying mouse and cell models of this process, researchers now have shown how immune cells dispatched to the lung to destroy a respiratory virus can fail to disperse after their job is done, setting off a chain of inflammatory events that leads to long-term lung problems.

Junior Kevin Hays has set a new record for standard Rubik’s Cubes solved while underwater: eight. Hays beat the previous record of five while sitting in a dunk tank April 19 on the Washington University in St. Louis campus at the annual Thurtene Carnival. The attempt took two minutes and five seconds.

While in Ethiopia as a Fulbright scholar, L. Lewis Wall, MD, DPhil, met a woman who is trying to change the experience of adolescent girls in rural Ethiopia by providing them with reusable sanitary pads and education about menstruation. Wall and his wife, Helen, decided they had to do something to support the mission.

Scientists, including researchers from Washington University School of Medicine, have found antibiotic resistance genes in the bacterial flora of a South American tribe that never before had been exposed to antibiotic drugs. The findings suggest that bacteria in the human body have had the ability to resist antibiotics since long before such drugs were ever used to treat disease.

Erin McGlothlin, PhD (right), associate professor of German and of Jewish studies in Arts & Sciences, was among eight faculty to receive an Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award. She is pictured with one of her graduate students who nominated her for the award, Ervin Malakaj, a PhD candidate in German.

Timothy M. Miller, MD, PhD, a leading researcher in the neurodegenerative disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), has been named the David Clayson Professor of Neurology at the School of Medicine. The professorship was established in 2001 through a bequest from David Clayson, PhD, to support innovative research into treatments for ALS.

Washington University in St. Louis will award five honorary degrees during the university’s 154th Commencement May 15. During the ceremony, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus, the university will bestow academic degrees on approximately 2,800 members of the Class of 2015.

Transit stops close to home and workplace incentives are associated with higher likelihood that commuters will choose public transportation, according to research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study is co-authored by Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School.

Student musicians on the Medical Campus brought their voices, instruments and musical prowess to the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center for a Coffeehouse performance Tuesday, April 7.