Newsroom Stories

There’s nothing wrong with a cookie or a glass of eggnog at the holidays, says Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD, director of the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research and the Center for Diabetes Translation Research at Washington University in St. Louis and associate dean for research at the Brown School. The key, Haire-Joshu says, is balance.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton shares some final thoughts after returning from the Fourth International Symposium on Energy and Environment: ACCESS (Abundant Clean Cost-effective Energy Systems for Sustainability) India and a meeting with the university’s International Advisory Council for Asia.

Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is director of the Center for Violence and Injury Protection, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is also a faculty scholar in WUSTL’s Institute for Public Health. She responds to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

The McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environmental Partnership (MAGEEP) — a consortium of 28 international universities — met in Mumbai, India, last week. S. Parasuraman, director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, was a symposium co-host.

The second half of the trip to India brought together members of the university’s International Advisory Council for Asia (IACA) Dec. 12-15 in New Delhi. U.S. Embassy official Donald Lu addressed the IACA meeting.

Rajendra S. Apte, MD, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences and of developmental biology, has been chosen to receive the 2013 Young Investigator Award from the Macula Society.

A new study out of Washington University in St. Louis is one of the first to use technology to effectively measure the use of built environments — parks, greenways, trails and other man-made public areas — as a means to improve public health. The study, “Emerging Technologies: Webcams and Crowd-Sourcing to Identify Active Transportation,” is being published this week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Lead author is J. Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor of public health at the Brown School.

Leila Nadya Sadat, JD, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, added another international honor to her resumé recently when she was appointed special adviser on Crimes Against Humanity by the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.

Ah, the Christmas season. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. A time to celebrate peace, love and the religious beliefs of America’s religious majority – whether you like it or not.

Tis the season for perennial battles between true believers and atheists, between mass marketers and the devout souls who worry about blatant commercialization of “the holiday season.”  While it may seem like it’s getting worse then ever, learning more about the facts behind these arguments might help all of us understand one another a bit better, suggest legal and religious history experts at Washington University in St. Louis.