Newsroom Stories

The prevailing model for planetary accretion assumes that the Solar System’s planets formed in an extremely hot, two-dimensional disk of gas and dust, post-dating the Sun. In the March issue of Planetary and Space Science, two scientists at Washington University in St. Louis propose a radically different model, in which collapse takes place in a cold, three-dimensional dust cloud.

Five student-athletes earned individual University Athletic Association titles to lead the Bears to a sweep of the men’s and women’s team conference championships Feb. 26 at the New Balance Track & Field Center in New York. Updates also included on men’s and women’s basketball season finales; swimming and diving; men’s tennis; and the opening series of the baseball season.

The current controversy over the Barack Obama administration’s birth control policy is not, contrary to some arguments, a matter of constitutional law, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. It is however, a matter of Constitutional principle, Magarian says.

Not all viruses make us sick. But which ones are friends and which ones are foes? Researchers, led by Gregory Storch, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3.3 million grant to study children with weakened immune systems to identify the viruses that make children sick.

Wang Shu has won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, making him the first Chinese citizen to receive what is generally considered architecture’s highest honor. Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of The Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the $100,000 prize, made the announcement Monday, Feb. 27. Two days later, students and faculty in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts will be among the first to congratulate Shu when the architect discusses his work for the school’s Public Lecture Series.

Work at Washington University in St. Louis, just published in EcoHealth, shows that the ecology of fear, like other concepts from predator-prey theory, also extends to parasites. Raccoons and squirrels would give up food, the study demonstrated, if the area was infested with larval ticks. At some level, they are weighing the value of the abandoned food against the risk of being parasitized.

Vu Nguyen, who joined the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences last fall as director of winds, will conduct the WUSTL Wind Ensemble in a free concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28, at the 560 Music Center. The performance will feature music by Tielman Susato, Morten Lauridsen, Johann Sebastian Bach, W. Francis McBeth and William Schuman.

The kick-off event for MBA student Mike McLaughlin’s 2,500-mile six-month back-to-back through-hike of the Appalachian and Ozark trails to raise money for the St. Louis Family Resource Center and a school for neglected blind children in Cameroon, Africa will be held Feb. 24.

In one way or another, nearly everyone at Washington University School of Medicine has heard of Bernard Becker, MD. Many use the beautiful Bernard Becker Medical Library or consult rare eye books there from the well-known Becker collection. In the Department of Ophthalmology, which Becker chaired for more than 35 years, faculty members know well his landmark research on glaucoma.

Surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified tiny fractures and other rib abnormalities in patients treated for a circulatory condition called venous thoracic outlet syndrome. The disorder is often seen in elite athletes who rely on their upper extremities.