Newsroom Stories

Retired NFL players use painkillers at four times the rate of the general population, according to new research conducted by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers say the brutal collisions and bone-jarring injuries associated with football often cause long-term pain, which contributes to continued use and abuse of pain-killing medications. 

WUSTL has received a three-year, $500,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a series of five “Vertical Seminars” in the humanities. The seminars are part of a pilot program to introduce an innovative format of collaborative research, called “The Vertical Seminar,” to the humanities. “The Vertical Seminar” will include scholars of different levels — dissertation students, postdoctoral fellows and junior and senior faculty — working together to examine a series of overarching questions in the humanities.

Diabetes researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a key mechanism that appears to contribute to the blood vessel damage that occurs in people with diabetes.

Washington University alumnus Julie Alexander will return to campus as the 2010-11 Marcus Artist in the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences. While in residence, she will present a free informal performance, titled “Weaving Traditional Japanese Dance and American Postmodern Dance,” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 1. 

The Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the Brown School will host a “Roaring Twenties” trivia night at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11, in Brown Hall Lounge. Tables of 8-10 players are available for $20 per person. In addition to the trivia competition, a silent auction will be held from throughout the week of Feb. 7-11 in Room 336 of Goldfarb Hall.

Scientific American Orangutans join the genome gang 01/27/2011 Orangutans can now be added to the list of species that have had their genomes sequenced, offering conservationists a wealth of data in their efforts to save the endangered great ape. “We’ve developed a resource that could allow conservationists to prioritize populations for saving based on genetic […]

Yvonne Sparks, senior manager of community development for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, delivers the keynote address for the fifth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Recovering From the Recession, Reaching for the Future,” on Jan. 22, in Brown Hall. The Society of Black Student Social Workers at the Brown School hosted the seminar in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

WUSTL will host a free Saturday Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) Seminar Series in February titled “The Value of Justice.” The annual seminar series features WUSTL experts from the areas of philosophy, social work, political science and anthropology to address one of the most enduring concepts in social, religious, ethical and political thinking: the idea of justice.

An international team of scientists, led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has decoded the DNA of a Sumatran orangutan. With this genome as a reference, the scientists then sequenced the genomes of five additional Sumatran and five Bornean orangutans, they report in the journal Nature.

The university’s Bearly Drivers carpool program celebrated its one-year anniversary in January by giving away an iPad through a drawing to a Bearly Drivers carpool member. The program, which includes 76 carpool members in 34 carpools, allows full-time employees on the Danforth, North and West campuses to save money through reduced driving and parking costs, reserve in-demand parking spots, and win prizes through monthly drawings.