Newsroom Stories

Cheryl Block, JD, federal budget and tax expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, weighs in on tax cut extensions. “We want it all: low tax rates, government spending on the programs we prefer, and — ideally — a balanced budget,” she says. “Perhaps not surprisingly, the desire for prudent budgets increasingly loses out to the first two demands.”

Sports updates for the week of Dec. 13, 2010.

Washington University’s Department of Facilities Planning & Management, School of Medicine Facilities Management Department and Office of Sustainability have partnered on a pilot project to retrofit a number of water fountains on the Danforth and Medical campuses to allow for the easy refilling of reusable water bottles. The filling stations were installed to provide the WUSTL community with easy access to drinking water for use in portable, reusable containers.

The National Children’s Study, the largest study ever conducted in the United States to learn about the health and development of children, is beginning in St. Louis this week.

Of note Cindy Grimm, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering, has received a three-year, $213,923 grant from the National Science Foundation for research titled “Collaborative Research: Biological Shape Spaces, Transforming Shape into Knowledge.” … Fang Liu, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in pathology and immunology, has received a two-year, $95,224 American Heart Association […]

Reuters US study helps unravel Alzheimer’s mystery 12/09/2010 Instead of producing too much of a protein, people with Alzheimer’s disease appear to have trouble getting rid of it, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. The finding may help explain why people with Alzheimer’s accumulate sticky clumps of a protein called amyloid beta, and it may help […]

Daily Kos New report: Nearly half of elderly will experience poverty 12/09/2010 A new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis sounds a huge warning bell for America’s seniors, current and future. Nearly half of all Americans between the ages of 60 and 90 will encounter at least one year of […]

Neurologists finally have an answer to one of the most important questions about Alzheimer’s disease: Do rising brain levels of a plaque-forming substance mean patients are making more of it or that they can no longer clear it from their brains as effectively? A new study by Randall Bateman, MD, assistant professor of neurology, shows clearance is impaired in Alzheimer’s patients.

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, a Grammy Award-winning ensemble known for its inventive, virtuoso transcriptions of concert masterworks, will present a special one-night-only St. Louis performance at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11. Sponsored by the Saint Louis Classical Guitar Society and Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, the concert will take place in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall of the university’s 560 Music Center. 

The WikiLeaks controversy raises a number of important legal issues about national security and freedom of the press under U.S. law, says Neil Richards, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Journalists and government officials have suggested that either WikiLeaks or The New York Times (NYT) might face legal liability for publishing the contents of diplomatic cables and other leaked documents. “In order to find either WikiLeaks/Julian Assange or the NYT liable, the government would need to prove two things — first that a law had been broken, and second that enforcement of the law was constitutional under the First Amendment,” Richards says.