Newsroom Stories

The recent Budweiser can redesign probably won’t do much to reinvigorate sagging sales of the iconic brew, say marketing professors at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Estate planning with Fido in mind? Better be careful, says a trusts and estates expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. The issue has been in the news recently. British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who died in February 2010, left a sizeable sum of money to his beloved dogs; Trouble, the recently deceased dog of “The Queen of Mean,” Leona Helmsley, famously inherited $12 million. Beyond celebrities, a powerful pet inheritance constituency thrives. Between 12 percent and 27 percent of owners have provisions for their pets in their wills. But what happens to the inheritance when the pet passes?

A traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum called “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” highlights how physicians, geneticists, anthropologists and others in the healing professions developed and participated in the Holocaust. The exhibit opens Monday, Aug. 8, at the Bernard Becker Medical Library at Washington University School of Medicine and will be on display until Sunday, Oct. 30.

Washington University, two administrators and a School of Medicine department have received safety awards from the Campus Safety Health and Environmental Management Association (CSHEMA) and the National Safety Council. WUSTL was recognized with CSHEMA’s 2011 Complete Safety Program Award of Merit for excellence in the university’s institutional safety and compliance programs.

Two recent research studies have found differences between the distribution of potassium-ion-channel variants in the mouse heart and in the human heart. In the mouse, the ion channels in the atria are different from those in the ventricles. In people there is no such chamber specificity. The difference is crucially important for the development of safe and effective cardiovascular drugs.

Worldwide, people aged 60 and above will comprise 13.6 percent of the population by 2020, and 22.1 percent of the population by 2050. China is the most rapidly aging country with older adults making up 13 percent of their population. “All countries will need to develop policies and programs that support productive engagement during later life,” says Nancy Morrow-Howell, PhD, the Ralph and Muriel Pumphrey Professor of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. “There is evidence that productive engagement in later life benefits both older adults and society at large. Expanding opportunities for productive engagement may increase the health and well-being of the older population. At the same time, older adults can be a valuable resource for growth in volunteering, civic service, caregiving, employment, and social entrepreneurship.”

Both the men’s and women’s swimming teams earned 2010-11 Team Scholar All-America honors from by the College Swimming Coaches Association of America (CSCAA). Updates include preseason polls in women’s soccer, men’s soccer and football, as well as the addition of former Olympian Lori Chalupny to the Bears’ coaching staff.

Unlike the majority of workers, domestic workers — such as housekeepers and paid caregivers of children and the elderly — remain invisible, laboring in the private setting of the home. This situation can lead to exploitative labor conditions. The International Labour Organization (ILO), a U.N. agency that promotes opportunities for workers to obtain decent and productive work, recently agreed to a Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, establishing international standards to improve working conditions for as many as 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the majority of whom are women and young girls. “Although delegates from the United States played a leading role in rallying support for the convention and advocating strong protections on behalf of domestic workers, it will take a Herculean effort to achieve decent work for domestic workers in the United States,” says Peggie Smith, JD, employment law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “At present, none of the major pieces of federal labor legislation in the United States comply with the standards in the convention.”

Sales of luxury goods, which analysts say could spike as much as eight percent this year, are soaring thanks to expanding personal wealth in China, says a luxury retail expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s reality-TV offering Sister Wives have thrust polygamy into popular culture in the United States. Estimates are that somewhere between 50,000-100,000 families in this country are currently risking criminal prosecution by practicing plural marriage. Proponents and detractors of polygamy use same-sex marriage to support their arguments, but that’s just a distraction, says Adrienne Davis, JD, an expert on gender relations and the William M. Van Cleve Professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “While the gay analogy may make for splashy punditry and good television, it distracts us from the main legal issue — polygamy challenges the regulations inherent in the conventional two-person marriage,” Davis says. “Putting aside whether you think polygamy is ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ it is important to look at whether U.S. law is up to regulating marital multiplicity.” She proposes some default rules that might accommodate polygamy, while ensuring against some of its historic and ongoing abuses.