Newsroom Stories

WHAT: The annual Thanksgiving feast at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Started 10 years ago 10 years ago as a potluck served by faculty and staff to students who could not get home for the break, the event has grown to include more than 500 students, faculty, staff, alumni and their […]

The New York Times best-selling historian Douglas Brinkley and New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast will present keynote addresses for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors”, Washington University’s 10th annual faculty book colloquium. Organized by the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences and the Washington University Libraries, the colloquium also will feature new book presentations by four faculty authors, as well as a display of all faculty books published during the past three years.

These days, there’s a lot of buzz about high school students needing to prepare for a global environment. An Nov. 29 panel discussion seeks to offer students some concrete guidelines as they make the transition to college. The event primarily targets all area high school students, but it also is geared toward parents and teachers.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, including Stuart A. Kornfeld, MD, have obtained new evidence that at least some persistent stuttering is caused by mutations in a gene governing not speech, but a metabolic pathway involved in recycling old cell parts. Beyond a simple association, the study provides the first evidence that mutations affecting cellular recycling centers called lysosomes actually play a role in causing some people to stutter. 

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton (center) speaks during the question-and-answer session of the “Report to the Neighbors” meeting Nov. 16 at the Knight Center. The annual event is held to help keep those living in neighborhoods surrounding WUSTL informed on university happenings and also to give neighbors a forum to voice comments and concerns to a panel of university administrators.

The women’s cross country team raced to the program’s first-ever national title at the 2011 NCAA Division III Cross Country Championship held Nov. 19 at Lake Breeze Golf Club in Winneconne, Wis. Updates also included on women’s soccer, men’s and women’s basketball and swimming and diving.

Genomics and Pathology Services at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (GPS@WUSTL), directed by Karen Seibert, PhD, is now offering a test for mutations in 28 genes associated with cancer. The genes in the test affect a variety of different types of tumors, including blood, lymph, lung, brain, bladder, kidney, skin, stomach, prostate and breast cancers.

Traditionally, fossil-hunters often could only make educated guesses as to where fossils lie. The rest lay with chance. But thanks to a software model used by WUSTL professor Glenn Conroy, PhD, and researchers at Western Michigan University, fossil-hunters’ reliance on luck when finding fossils may be diminishing. Using artificial neural networks, Conroy and colleagues developed a computer model that can pinpoint productive fossil sites.  

Veterans are returning home to an abysmal economy and a tough job market. “After World War II, employers used to snap up veterans because of their tremendous skills sets gained in the service — whether that be technical, leadership, or other job specific aptitudes,” says Monica Matthieu, PhD, research assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert on veteran mental health. “But now, veterans are facing higher unemployment rates than civilians as employers may be concerned about veterans’ struggle with the mental and physical health aftereffects of military service,” she says.

From the Arab spring to the London riots to the ongoing Occupy protests, themes of revolution, unrest and community are very much in the news today. They are also very much in the dance studio, as evidenced by Kinetic Field Work, the 2011 Washington University Dance Theatre concert. The annual showcase, which takes place in Edison Theatre Dec. 2, 3 and 4, will feature more than 50 student dancers, selected by audition, performing new and original works by seven faculty and guest choreographers.