Newsroom Stories

Coco Chanel never took a marketing class, but she’s helping teach one this semester at Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis. Students in the new course, “Luxury Apparel-Marketing B53” are examining case studies of brands that make up the $237 billion industry that has its roots in Chanel’s famous perfume and little black dress.

Seethu Seetharaman, PhD, W. Patrick McGinnis Professor of Marketing at Olin Business School will speak May 17 in Kansas City about marketing in the digital age.

Sports updates for the week of May 16, 2011.

In the graphics art world, Natalie Sklobovskaya is that rare commodity — a triple threat. Sklobovskaya is not only a driven illustrator, but she also enjoys computer programing, writing and playing music, and creating websites. Those talents enable a nice collision of creativity that have allowed her to draw comics, animate them, score a soundtrack and upload them to a website she designed.She’ll graduate May 20 with a double major in communication design and computer science.

What does it take to regenerate a limb? Biologists have long thought that organ regeneration in animals like zebrafish and salamanders involved stem cells that can generate any tissue in the body. But new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown that the individual cells in a regenerating limb retain their original identities and only give rise to more of their own kind.

Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal, PhD, was on hand as 17 members of the Gateway Battalion, St. Louis’ Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) based at Washington University, were commissioned as new Army officers. The class of 17 cadets from area universities, including seven from WUSTL, received their two gold bars and took an oath of office during the 93rd annual Gateway Battalion Army ROTC Commissioning Ceremony, held May 13 at Tisch Commons in the Danforth University Center. 

Researchers at Washington University and King’s College London have independently identified DNA on chromosome 3 that appears to be related to depression. The new studies identify a DNA region containing up to 90 genes. Both are published May 16 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. 

Plants are less efficient at capturing the energy in sunlight than solar cells, mostly because they have to drag along evolutionary baggage. But scientists are already thinking of creative ways to fix the inefficiencies.

Washington University in St. Louis hydrogeologist Robert Criss, PhD, wasn’t particularly surprised by the spring floods on the Mississippi this year. Floods are becoming more frequent and more severe, he says. “We are increasingly constraining the river by building wing dikes and higher levees and then upping the ante by building in the river’s natural flood plains” Criss says. “There are far better ways to deal with this problem than have municipalities compete with one another to build the highest levee and fight over who has the right to be protected in times of distress.”

Within a year of starting classes at WUSTL, Kirsten Siebach, Outstanding Graduate in the College of Arts & Sciences, became the youngest member of the Phoenix Mars Lander science team in Tucson, Ariz. She’ll graduate May 20 with a double major in earth and planetary sciences and chemistry and a minor in English.