Newsroom Stories

Barry Lynn (second from left), executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, talks with WUSTL students March 20 during an informal gathering in the Danforth University Center. Lynn was on campus to deliver an Assembly Series/John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics lecture that evening. The students enjoyed a lively discussion about how religion is influencing many current debates among political candidates.

The baseball team won all five games last week to improve its overall record to 17-6 on the season. Updates also included on softball, men’s tennis, swimming & diving, track & field and women’s golf.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a major impact on the presidential campaign, says Timothy D. McBride, PhD, health economist and associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “The health reform legislation was the signature piece of social legislation passed by President (Barack) Obama’s administration in his first term,” he says. How the court’s decision will influence the election could be quite complex, says McBride. The court is hearing arguments in the case March 26-28

The 22nd annual Pow Wow at Washington University in St. Louis, a festival of American Indian cultures, will be held Saturday, March 31, in the WU Field House. This event, hosted by the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the Brown School of Social Work, is free and open to the public. Visitors and participants will be able to enjoy dancing, singing, drumming, arts, crafts and food. Grand entries will take place at noon and 6 p.m. Traditional arts and crafts booths and community information booths open at 10 a.m.

Four applications of the new imaging technique photoacoustic tomography are moving into clinical trials. One is to visualize the sentinel lymph nodes that are important in breast cancer staging; a second to monitor early response to chemotherapy; a third to image melanomas; and the fourth to image the gastrointestinal tract. Biomedical engineer Lihong Wang believes photoacoustic tomography might also allow early diagnosis of cancer because the technique can reveal the hypermetabolism that is cancer’s hallmark.

Seismologists have just returned from a cruise in the Western Pacific to lay the instruments for a seismic survey that will follow the water chemically bound to or trapped in the down-diving Pacific Plate at the Mariana trench, the deep trench to which Avatar director James Cameron is poised to plunge.

Susan E. Mackinnon is one of three U.S. physicians to be honored with a Clinical Excellence Award by Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., which publishes “America’s Top Doctors” and other guides to choosing physicians. She received the award March 26 in New York.

The Washington University Department of Orthopaedic Surgery is hosting young women from St. Louis-area high schools to encourage them to pursue careers in orthopaedic surgery and engineering. The program, called the Perry Initiative, aims to get young women interested in those technical fields where women currently comprise only 7 percent of the professional workforce.

David Levine, a fourth-year medical student, and his wife, Eli, learn that Levine matched in internal medicine at New York University at Match Day March 16. This year, 121 students matched to internships or residencies nationwide and in Canada. 

Students in the McDonnell International Scholars Academy pose in front of the Statue of Liberty on a cruise to see the Manhattan skyline March 11. As part of its leadership training program, the academy takes scholars each spring to New York or Washington, D.C. During the New York trip the week of spring break, scholars met with leaders from the financial sector and international politics.