Newsroom Stories

This year’s holiday gingerbread house was on display during a reception following the December degree candidate recognition ceremony Dec. 6. A replica of Anheuser-Busch Hall, the gingerbread house is now on display in Anheuser-Busch Hall’s atrium until Dec. 15.

An astrophysicist at Washington University in St. Louis is among the team hunting for an elusive particle called a WIMP, that may be the fundamental particle of dark matter. To catch this notoriously wily particle they have built a detector consisting of a large vat of xenon in a deep chamber of a played-out gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

In the 1920s and ’30s, African-American preachers spread the word to a mass audience one phonograph record at a time. A new book by Lerone Martin, PhD, of the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, chronicles a forgotten era when sermons by African-American clergy on vinyl (and wax) outsold popular performers such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.

New research by Daniel Link, MD, and colleagues at The Genome Institute at Washington University has revealed that mutations that accumulate randomly as a person ages can play a role in a fatal form of leukemia that develops after treatment for another cancer.

Eighty-one staff members in the Facilities Management Department at Washington University School of Medicine recently earned the title of Facility Management Professional (FMP) from the International Facility Management Association. The department set a national record by having so many employees earn this title in less than four months. Professionals who become FMPs complete a series of comprehensive exams covering four areas: operations and maintenance, project management, finance and business, and leadership and strategy.

​The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis will present its annual sing-along to “Messiah” at 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 14. The performance, which will include the Christmas portion of “Messiah” as well as the “Hallelujah Chorus,” will take place in Graham Chapel.

The Friday, Dec. 5, meeting of the Washington University in St. Louis Board of Trustees focused on the university’s role in addressing current challenges, both local and global, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.

Rare objects from the University Libraries Department of Special Collections are featured in “Into the Vault,” a new video series produced by Arts & Sciences in collaboration with University Libraries and hosted by Seth Graebner, PhD, associate professor of French in Arts & Sciences. Among them are Galileo’s “Dialogue,” Denis Diderot’s “Encyclopédie,” Charles Darwin’s “The Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects” and a 1678 letter from Isaac Newton to natural philosopher Robert Hooke.

Samuel A. Wickline, MD, has been chosen to receive the Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis. He will receive the honor Saturday, Dec. 6. Faculty achievement awards will be presented to David A. Balota, PhD, and Steven L. Teitelbaum, MD.

Genetic mutations may cause more cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) than scientists previously had realized, according to researchers. Shown are study authors Janet Cady, a PhD candidate, and Matthew Harms, MD, assistant professor of neurology at the School of Medicine.