Newsroom Stories

A new cyclotron recently was installed at the East Building on the School of Medicine campus. The unit, in the works for more than a decade, is a particle accelerator that will produce radioactive compounds, many of which are used with positron emission tomography (PET) scanners to detect specific types of cancers.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have shown that providing women with free contraception does not increase the likelihood that they will have sex with multiple partners, as critics of the practice have suggested. Shown is the study’s first author, Gina Secura, PhD.

Washington University in St Louis chemist Timothy Wencewicz says we’ll stay ahead of antibiotic resistance only if we find drugs with new scaffolds, or core chemical structures. One promising candidate, an antibiotic made by a bacterium than infects plants, caught his attention because it contains an “enchanted ring,” the beta-lactam ring that is found in penicillin. In this drug candidate, however, it acts against a different target than the penicillins.

Roger Tsien, one of three chemists who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008 for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, will give the Leopold Marcus lecture at Washington University in St. Louis. His talk, “Fluorescent Molecules for Fun and Profit,” is intended for a general audience and will take place at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 12, in the Laboratory Sciences Building, Room 300. The talk is free and open to the public.

Three promising biomarkers being studied to detect Alzheimer’s disease in its early stages appear to undergo a surprising shift as patients develop symptoms of dementia, researchers led by Anne Fagan, PhD, at the School of Medicine report.

Tia Drake, executive director of Graduate Medical Education (GME) at the School of Medicine, has been honored with the GME Institutional Coordinator Excellence Award.

Jon Lowe is the new chef at Ibby’s in WUSTL’s Danforth University Center. Learn more about Lowe, who loves French cooking and making granola with his 3-year-old daughter. He previously worked at Clayton seafood restaurant Oceano Bistro.

“If these two studies are really correct, what people in general are trying to do” to get and stay thin “might be completely wrong in terms of maintaining health and even longevity,” suggests WUSTL microbiologist Shin-ichiro Imai (pictured) in a Science magazine article on new dietary research. This story and more in today’s roundup.

Last fall, researchers in St. Louis released five policy briefs in a groundbreaking study on the health and well-being of African Americans in the region. Now it’s time for the community to weigh in on “For the Sake of All: A Report on the Health and Well-Being of African Americans in St. Louis.” A Community Feedback Forum will take place from 2-5 p.m. Monday, March 3, in the Learning Lab at the Forest Park Visitor Center, 5595 Grand Drive on the north side of Forest Park near the Missouri History Museum.

Africa Week returned to WUSTL last week with the ever-popular fashion show and the debut of the Mr./Miss ASA Pageant. Senior Ola Abiose (right) struts the runway during one of the activities organized by the African Students Association.