Newsroom Stories

Washington University’s Bear Cub grant program helps researchers make the leap from bench scientists to budding entrepreneurs. The application deadline is Nov. 30.

Andrew Jackson stalks the stage in leather jeans. A power chord fills the air. Jackson was seventh president of the United States but this isn’t history class — it’s “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” an irreverent romp through the American political id. The production from the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis takes place Nov. 14-23.

Today’s freshmen students have a 50 percent chance of living to see their 100th birthdays. They are in the middle of a demographic revolution that will shape every aspect of their lives. A new interdisciplinary course for freshmen introduced this fall, “When I’m Sixty-Four: Transforming Your Future,” aims to prepare students for this aging revolution and to encourage them to examine their present and future lives in more detail.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has boosted funding for the first large-scale clinical trial aimed at identifying drugs to stop or slow Alzheimer’s disease in people who are destined to get it. The trial is led by Randall Bateman, MD.

This August, a consortium of 65 scientists announced in the journal Science that they have so far found seven probable but not confirmed interstellar dust specks in a collector returned to Earth by the Stardust spacecraft in 2006. Undergraduate students at Washington University in St. Louis found three of the seven specks of dust.

Improved communication among health-care providers during shift changes reduced injuries due to medical errors by 30 percent, according to a multicenter study. The research involved St. Louis Children’s Hospital and eight other academic medical centers. Pictured is study co-author F. Sessions Cole, MD, and attending physician Amanda Emke, MD.

Bestselling novelist Curtis Sittenfeld will close the fall Washington University in St. Louis Assembly Series with a talk on “St. Louis, Novels, and St. Louis Novels” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 12, in Simon Hall’s May Auditorium. The lecture is sponsored by University Libraries and is also the annual Neureuther Library Lecture. It is free and open to the public.

Efforts at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals to safely coordinate a response to the Ebola virus have been underway for several months. Among those efforts are suggested steps for faculty, staff and students traveling to and from Ebola-stricken countries.

Acclaimed journalist and author Thomas Friedman will headline the annual Founders Day celebration at Washington University in St. Louis Saturday, Nov. 8, at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch. The annual banquet and ceremony that honors the 1853 founding of Washington University also confers the Distinguished Faculty Awards, Distinguished Alumni Awards and the Robert S. Brookings Awards.

They’ve shrunken Shakespeare, condensed Christmas, abbreviated the Bible and pruned and pared great works of poetry and prose. At 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, at Washington University’s Edison Theatre, The Reduced Shakespeare Company will tackle the subject it was born to abridge: “The Complete History of Comedy.”