Newsroom Stories

Richard J. Smith, PhD (left), dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, visits with Arts & Sciences PhD student Rajbir Purewal and other teaching assistants after he presented them with the Arts & Sciences’ Graduate Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence during an April 25 ceremony in the Danforth University Center. The award recognizes exemplary performance by graduate teaching assistants.

Rice originated in China, a team of genome researchers has concluded in a study tracing back thousands of years of evolutionary history through large-scale gene re-sequencing. Their findings, which appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that domesticated rice may have first appeared as far back as approximately 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley of China. Previous research suggested domesticated rice may have two points of origin — India as well as China.

Sports updates for the week of May 2, 2011.

Four students have been named winners of the 24th annual Neureuther Student Book Collection Essay Competition, sponsored by Washington University Libraries. The competition offers prizes to two undergraduate students and two graduate students who write short essays about their personal book collections.

Tim Bono, who will receive his doctorate in psychology at the May 20 Commencement, could very well be the model of an engaged WUSTL student as both an undergraduate and a graduate student. He has served the university in a myriad of roles, including most notably as the graduate student representative to the Board of Trustees and to the search committee for the dean of Arts & Sciences.

Erik Trinkaus, PhD, considered by many to be the world’s most influential scholar of Neandertal and early modern human biology and evolution, and Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD, an internationally renowned immunologist and arthritis researcher, will receive Washington University’s 2011 faculty achievement awards, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced.

Higher levels of cellular chatter boosts levels of amyloid beta in the brain regions that Alzheimer’s hits first, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. Amyloid beta is the main ingredient of the plaque lesions that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. The finding may help explain why areas that are most active when the brain rests are often among the first to develop these plaques, according to the researchers.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts honored eight outstanding architecture and art alumni at its fourth annual Awards for Distinction dinner April 28 at the Coronado Ballroom in St. Louis. The awards recognized graduates who have demonstrated creativity, innovation, leadership and vision through their contributions to the practices of art, architecture and design, as well as to WUSTL and the Sam Fox School.

Corey Deeken, PhD, instructor in surgery, has received a one-year, $99,995 2011 Research Grant from the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation for research titled “Enzymatic Degradation of Biological Tissue-Based Scaffold Materials and the Effect on Tensile Strength Over Time.” … David Fike, PhD, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, has received a […]

To kick off a new Styrofoam recycling program at the School of Medicine this month, members of about 15 labs in the Department of Molecular Microbiology loaded one-year’s worth of Styrofoam into a 52-foot 18-wheeler truck April 28. Employees spent one hour loading the Styrofoam into the truck, which was filled about halfway.