Newsroom Stories

Washington University in St. Louis chemist D. André d’Avignon, who manages the university’s high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance facility, has been named the winner of the 2013 Saint Louis Award. The Saint Louis Award, administered by the St. Louis section of the American Chemical Society, is given to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the profession of chemistry and demonstrated the potential to further the advancement of the chemical profession.

Alison K. Snyder-Warwick, MD, assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, was installed in June as secretary of the Sir Charles Bell Society at the International Facial Nerve Symposium in Boston.

Trevor A. Dawes, associate university librarian at WUSTL, recently was installed as president of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Bee populations are declining worldwide. But recently, students in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts worked with PAUSE, a multinational group of scientists, gardeners and beekeepers, to design pollinator-friendly sculpture in St. Louis’ Florissant Community Garden.

Spotify. Pandora. iTunes. YouTube. We are constantly bombarded with a seemingly limitless amount of new music in our daily lives. But why do we keep coming back to that one song or album we couldn’t get enough of in college? New research from Washington University’s Olin Business School shows that although consumers say they prefer to listen to unfamiliar music, their choices actually belie that preference.

Automatic federal budget cuts, known as the sequester, which began March 1, have had minimal impact on federal regulatory agencies, finds a new report on the U.S. budget for this fiscal year and next. The on-budget cost of regulation is detailed in a new report, Sequester’s Impact on Regulatory Agencies Modest: An Analysis of the U.S. Budget for Fiscal Years 2013 and 2014, published by Washington University in St. Louis and George Washington University.

Fumihiko Urano, MD, PhD, has been named the new Samuel E. Schechter Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Shown (from left) are Larry J. Shapiro, MD; Urano; and Victoria J. Fraser, MD.

An anchor tenant in WUSTL’s new Delmar Loop development will fulfill a long-time need along Delmar Boulevard: a grocery store, operated by Global Foods Market. The $80 million retail and student apartment complex under construction will be called The Lofts of Washington University. Another tenant will be the Peacock Loop Diner, operated by Joe Edwards, owner of Blueberry Hill.

Researchers have found that seeing well as we age depends, at least in part, on a recycling process in the eye that mops up cellular debris and recycles light-sensitive proteins. The findings suggest that disruptions in that process may harm vision and play a key role in the development of eye diseases related to aging. Inside the retinal pigment epithelium cells pictured are structures used for recycling (green) that engulf and digest spent parts of photoreceptor cells (red).

Children born with a complete absence of the external ear canal, even if only one ear is affected, are more likely than their peers to struggle in school, according to new research at the School of Medicine.