Newsroom Stories

Doctors at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are performing a new procedure to treat atrial fibrillation, a common irregular heartbeat. Available at only a handful of U.S. medical centers, this “hybrid” procedure combines minimally invasive surgical techniques with the latest advances in catheter ablation. The two-pronged approach gives doctors access to both the inside and outside of the heart at the same time, helping to more completely block the erratic electrical signals that cause atrial fibrillation.

The WUSTL Faculty Senate adopted an Open Access Resolution that encourages faculty members to make their scholarly and creative works freely available online. The resolution also includes a recommendation for University Libraries and the Bernard Becker Medical Library to develop the capacity to capture faculty scholarship, make it publicly accessible and preserve it over time.

A ring-shaped laser no bigger than a pinprick can accurately detect and count individual viruses, the particles that jumpstart cloud formation or those that contaminate the air we breathe. A particle disturbs the light circulating in the ring, splitting the lasing frequency. This split is a measure of the particle’s size.

Praised as “a sly satire of celebrity, consumerism, and the art world” by the Los Angeles Times, the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop has been one of the year’s most talked-about films, capturing the notoriously elusive Bansky and other prominent street artists at work and in their own words. At 8:30 p.m. Monday, July 18, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host an outdoor screening of Exit Through the Gift Shop in the museum’s east parking lot. 

Hungarian installation artist Balázs Kicsiny is the 2011-12 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Based in Budapest, Kicsiny is among Hungary’s most highly regarded contemporary artists, known for large-scale sculptural installations, or “frozen performances,” that draw equally on the languages of theater, philosophy and the visual arts. 

DNA analysis of more than 1300 coconuts from around the world reveals that the coconut was brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. What’s more, coconut genetics also preserve a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.

In conjunction with National HIV Testing Day Monday, June 27, Washington University School of Medicine is teaming with the City of St. Louis Department of Health to offer free, confidential tests for HIV and syphilis.

Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience: A Primer, is the second book in 18 months from Charles F. Zorumski, MD, the Samuel B. Guze Professor and Head of Psychiatry, and Eugene H. Rubin, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry. It is about how the brain works and what the growing understanding of neuroscience will mean to future diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illnesses. 

Kevin G. Hall, national economics correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, has won the 2011 Weidenbaum Center Award for Evidence-Based Journalism. Hall will receive the award during the center’s annual media retreat June 26-29 in Cape Cod.

Rather than count sheep, drink warm milk or listen to soothing music, many insomniacs probably wish for a switch they can flick to put themselves to sleep. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, including Paul Shaw, PhD, have discovered such a switch in the brains of fruit flies.