Newsroom Stories

The food was terrible. Kool-Aid, Manwich, Jiffy Pop, Twinkies, Spam (when the word referred to something edible). But Pat Hazell loved it all. In “The Wonder Bread Years,” Hazell — one of the original writers for “Seinfeld” — turns a fond yet pitiless eye to the brick-a-brack of American childhood. The acclaimed one-man show comes to the Edison Ovations Series Jan. 24 and 25.

As an artist, the Sam Fox School’s Patricia Olynyk frequently investigates the intersections of art and science. Now Olynyk is helping to lead a national task force on the topic while also planning a vertical seminar about “The Role of Arts Practice in the Research University.”

An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the elephant shark, a curious-looking fish with a snout that resembles the end of an elephant’s trunk. Pictured is lead researcher Byrappa Venkatesh, PhD, of A*STAR in Singapore, holding an elephant shark.

The School of Medicine and St. Louis Children’s Hospital are part of a new multi-institutional project that aims to create a national pediatric “learning health system” that will feature an extensive clinical data research network. Feliciano “Pele” Yu Jr., MD, is the project’s principal investigator on the Washington University Medical Campus.

Some brain regions in adults retain a childlike ability to establish new connections, potentially contributing to our ability to learn new skills and form new memories as we age, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Allen Institute for Brain Sciences in Seattle.

Most WUSTL campuses had a rare snow day Monday after the St. Louis region got blasted with major snowfall during the weekend, followed by bitterly cold temperatures. The School of Medicine remained open, and certain other “essential” services, such as police and facilities management, were operating. Crews were still hard at work Tuesday to clear the snow from walkways and elsewhere around campus.

Washington University boasts one of the nation’s most successful TRIO Programs, a federal initiative to support low-income and first-generation students. The program has helped Arts & Sciences senior Greg Opara, the son of Nigerian immigrants, buy books, travel home for breaks and, most recently, fly to interviews at top medical schools.

Experts and key strategists on charter schools in Missouri were in Brown Hall Dec. 11 for another event in the Brown School Policy Forum’s Child Well-being series, an ongoing public discussion on child welfare in Missouri. “Charter Schools in Missouri: The Emergence of Reform” examined state charter school policy both past and present and how the development of charter schools affect school choice and education reform strategies.

Although most smokers realize the habit isn’t good for their hearts and lungs, Washington University orthopaedic surgeon Jeffrey Johnson and other surgeons remind patients that if they need surgery, smoking increases infection rates, makes problems with wound healing more likely and also interferes with bone healing.

Your nose is not the only organ in your body that can sense cigarette smoke wafting through the air. Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have shown that your lungs have odor receptors as well. The odor receptors in your lungs are in the membranes of flask-shaped neuroendocrine cells that dump neurotransmitters and neuropeptides when the receptors are stimulated, perhaps triggering you to cough to rid your body of the offending substance.