Newsroom Stories

Excess nutrients, such as fat and sugar, don’t just pack on the pounds but can push some cells in the body over the brink. Unable to tolerate this “toxic” environment, these cells commit suicide. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered three unexpected players that help a cell overloaded with fat initiate its own demise.

A rare 1950s comic book, titled Negro Romance, that Gerald Early, PhD, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters in Arts & Sciences and director of the Center for the Humanities, bought on Ebay is the focus of a mystery in an upcoming episode of PBS’ History Detectives. Early wants to know: Did black artists create this book? Who was the intended audience? Host Gwendolyn Wright gets the answers. The episode will air locally at 8 p.m. Tuesday, July 12, on Nine PBS. It will be repeated at 1 a.m. Thursday, July 14, and 4 p.m. Sunday, July 17. 

Tiffany L. Stanley, most recently a reporter-researcher at The New Republic magazine, has been named managing editor of a forthcoming online journal from the Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. R. Marie Griffith, PhD, the center’s new director and the John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, announced Stanley’s appointment, which was effective July 1, 2011.

Rising senior Liz Phillips of the women’s track & field team was named a Capital One First-Team Academic All-American June 23. She is the first WUSTL women’s track & field student athlete to garner academic All-America honors since Morgen Leonard-Fleckman received first-team accolades in 2008. Other WUSTL sports updates will be added throughout the month of July, 2011.

WUSTL’s University College in Arts & Sciences will host a reception titled “Food For Thought” for prospective students of the Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) program at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 4, at Jimmy’s on the Park in Clayton, Mo. The evening’s topic will be “Why Shakespeare Matters.” At the event, prospective students can meet faculty, staff and students from University College and learn about the MLA program.

What can Waffle House teach about disaster preparedness and risk management, especially in the wake of this spring’s devastating tornados? Plenty, says a supply chain expert at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University in St. Louis School of Law students Kailey Burger, Deona DeClue and Joseph Franklin are featured in TIME magazine’s online Fourth of July coverage focusing on the U.S. Constitution. Visit time.com. Reporters filmed people across the United States reading the Bill of Rights. Burger, DeClue and Franklin read the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Amendments, which focus on due process, speedy trials and civil trials by jury. The students were filmed in St. Louis’ historic Old Courthouse, site of the Dred Scott case. 

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a protein made by a key Alzheimer’s gene slows the brain’s ability to get rid of amyloid beta, the main ingredient of the amyloid plaques that characterize the devastating illness.

School of Medicine scientists, including Richard Wilson, PhD, have completed the largest analysis to date of the genetic mutations underlying ovarian cancer.

Cassandra Newburg accepts an award at the Cornerstone Celebration in Holmes Lounge April 20. Newburg was being honored for her role as a Calc Peer-Led Team Learning leader this year. Also at the awards ceremony, five students and two faculty members received a Sony VAIO S Series Notebook and technology package as part of the Sony Electronics Scholarship Award.