Newsroom Stories

The third round of Tread the Med, a walking program and competition  open to School of Medicine employees, is under way. Among those participating is medical assistant Deloris Brown, who credits the program with improving her health and helping her lose about 70 pounds. Registration for the program will remain open until Feb. 15.

We would all like to believe that there is a kind of karma in life that guarantees those who cheat eventually pay for their bad behavior, if not immediately, then somewhere down the line. But a study of a new gene in the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum suggests that, at least for amoebae, it is possible to cheat and get away with it.

Matthew J. Silva, PhD, has been named the Julia and Walter R. Peterson Orthopaedic Research Professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Corporations’ religious freedom claims against the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate miss a “basic fact of health economics: health insurance, like wages, is compensation that belongs to the employee,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Sepper’s scholarship explores the interaction of morality, professional ethics, and law in medicine.

The Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine began seeing patients Jan. 7 at Siteman’s newest outpatient location,in south St. Louis County.

 Super-TIGER  the WUSTL-led cosmic ray experiment, has just been given the green light for  a third circuit around Antarctica. If the balloon stays up for a complete circuit it will probably break the heavy-lift scientific ballooning record of 42 days — and bring in a rich haul of data about cosmic rays, charged particles that continually bombard the Earth from space. The team has gone positively piratical over the prospect of more booty.

Sophomore forward Melissa Gilkey scored 18 of her game-high 22 points in the first half to lead the No. 3 women’s basketball team to a 96-67 victory at the University of Chicago in the University Athletic Association (UAA) opener for both teams Saturday in the Windy City.

Lynn A. Cornelius, chief of the Division of Dermatology at Washington University School of Medicine, has been named the Winfred A. and Emma R. Showman Professor in Dermatology. Cornelius specializes in the treatment and research of melanoma, a deadly skin cancer.

Lora Iannotti, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, was working in Haiti when an earthquake devastated that country three years ago this month. She has been back to Haiti 10 times since Jan. 12, 2010, and says the country is “literally aching for public health expertise, yet not one public health degree program exists anywhere.”

The Hon. Randall R. Rader, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, will present “A View From the Federal Circuit: A Conversation With Chief Judge Randall R. Rader,” including a panel discussion with members of local bar associations, from 3-4:15 p.m. Friday, Jan.18. The event will be in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom (Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 310); a reception will follow in the Janite Lee Reading Room. To RSVP for the event, visit http://law.wustl.edu/faculty/forms/rsvpform.asp?BookingID=234714.