Newsroom Stories

Do black leather pants qualify as a tax deduction for rock stars? Fans, musicians, journalists, researchers and anyone else interested in music can see how the courts dealt with this question and nearly any other legal issue involving the music industry at The Discography: Legal Encyclopedia of Popular Music accessible through thediscography.org. The site was created by Loren Wells, JD, musician and recent graduate of the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law and is supported by the Center for Empirical Research in the Law (CERL) at the School of Law. The site’s database — the most elaborate of its kind — covers 2,400 court opinions spanning nearly 200 years of the music industry.

International Business Times HK 64 percent of elderly black Americans face risk of poverty 12/14/2010 As many as 50 percent of Americans between the ages of 60 and 90 will face at least one year of poverty or near poverty going forward and that poverty will not be evenly distributed across the population, according to […]

The ruling by Judge Henry E. Hudson of the Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., finding the individual mandate provision of the new health-care law unconstitutional is an important ruling, but it does not settle the question, says Timothy D. McBride, PhD, health economist and associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. McBride says that the individual mandate, while just a small piece of the health reform structure, is very important to making all of the parts of health reform work. “It is more or less like pulling on the thread of a garment, and having the whole garment come apart if this disappears,” he says.

The cyanobacteria are famous for releasing the oxygen that made the Earth a hospitable planet, but some strains also have a hidden talent for producing hydrogen gas, a potential biofuel. With the help of a few metabolic tricks, a lab at Washington University has coaxed one such strain to produce champion levels of the gas.

Innovative, high-priority research initiatives by Washington University scientists at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center are now under way thanks to a $7.5 million grant from Emerson and AT&T. Emerson’s Charitable Trust and the AT&T Foundation are contributing $5 million and $2.5 million, respectively. This commitment will generate an additional $15 million for these initiatives through matching support from Washington University School of Medicine, BJC HealthCare and the Siteman Cancer Center.

People with a known, high risk for Alzheimer’s disease develop abnormal brain function even before the appearance of telltale, amyloid plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings suggest that a gene variant affects brain function long before the brain begins accumulating the amyloid that will eventually lead to dementia. 

A team of scientists a team, including William B. McKinnon, PhD, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, propose an explanation for the bizarre ridge belting Saturn’s outermost moon Iapetus. At one time Iapetus itself may have had a satellite, created by a giant impact with another body. The satellite’s orbit would have decayed because of tidal interactions with Iapetus, and at some point it would have been ripped apart, forming a ring of debris around Iapetus that would eventually slam into the moon near its equator,

Nutritional information has popped up on the front of food packages using a wide range of different symbols and rating systems. But without a common form or standards, there’s a risk that consumers could be confused by the new information, says Matthew Kreuter, PhD, a public health expert and professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.  

Jack Ladenson, PhD (left), the Oree M. Carroll and Lillian B. Ladenson Professor of Clinical Chemistry in Pathology and Immunology and professor of clinical chemistry in medicine and the inaugural recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, talks with Faculty Achievement Award winners John C. Morris, MD (center), the Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Professor of Neurology, and Gary J. Miller, PhD, professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, before the awards ceremony Dec. 4 at Moore Auditorium on the Medical Campus.

For many, mid-December means hanging lights, decorating the Christmas tree and going to holiday parties. For college students, mid-December means another thing: final papers and exams. But it doesn’t have to be so stressful. WUSTL staff psychologist Brent Beam, PhD, says self-care and skillful studying are essential, along with tips on how to stay stress-free this week.