Newsroom Stories

BBC News | Health (UK) Chromosome fault linked to sleepwalking 2/8/2011 A genetic link to sleepwalking has been identified by researchers. They studied four generations of a family of sleepwalkers and concluded that the condition is associated with a fault in a section of chromosome 20, BBC News reported. Just one copy of the defective […]

Like listeners adjusting a high-tech radio, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have tuned in to precise frequencies of brain activity to unleash new insights into how the brain works. “Analysis of brain function normally focuses on where brain activity happens and when,” says Eric Leuthardt, MD. “What we’ve found is that the wavelength of the activity provides a third major branch of understanding brain physiology.”

What happens to young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) once they graduate high school and are no longer entitled to services? In a first-of-its-kind study, Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at rates of service use among young adults with an ASD during their first few years after leaving high school. He found that 39.1 percent of these youths received no speech therapy, mental health, medical diagnostics or case management services. Shattuck also found that the odds of not receiving any services were more than three times higher for African-American young adults compared with white young adults and more than five times higher for those with incomes of $25,000 or less relative to those with incomes over $75,000.

UPI
 Bills to restrict abortion to get hearings
 02/07/2011 Expanded restrictions on federal funding of abortion get separate committee hearings this week in the U.S. House of Representatives, but observers don’t foresee the measures making it through the Senate. “They can’t expect this legislation to go beyond the House of Representatives,” said Steve Smith, a […]

WUSTL sports updates for the week of Feb. 7, 2011.

Mark Alford, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, participated Jan. 29 in a roundtable discussion in New York about the quantum mind theory of consciousness. Quantum mind is a fashionable theory originally proposed by physicist Roger Penrose that grounds perception in the periodic collapse of quantum entangled electrons in our brain. Alford, who studies phenomenon that can only be explained by quantum mechanics nonetheless played the role of the skeptic in the discussion, which was videotaped and posted on the web.

Doc M. Billingsley, graduate student in anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has received a one-year, $9,445 grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for research titled “Networks of K’iche Knowledge Production: An Ethnography of Memory in Practice.” … Peter Burgers, PhD, the Marvin A. Brennecke Professor of Biological Chemistry, received an honorary doctorate in medicine from Umeå […]

The inaugural class has been selected for the Professional Leadership Academy & Network (PLAN), a yearlong professional development program intended to cultivate future leaders at Washington University in St. Louis. And according to PLAN committee members, it was no easy task to choose the class of 26 from the “talented staff pool” of applicants.

Poet Kathleen Peirce will ready from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 10, for Washington University’s Writing Program in Arts & Sciences. Peirce is the author of four books of poetry: Mercy (1991), Divided Touch, Divided Color (1995), The Oval Hour (1999) and The Ardors (2004). 

The Pitch
 Carmon Colangelo to speak at Epperson Auditorium, Kansas City 02/04/2011 Carmon Colangelo, a pioneering printmaker whose work combines surrealism and abstraction with the exploration of art history, science and technology, will speak as part of the Current Perspectives Lecture Series at 7 p.m. Feb 24 in the Epperson Auditorium in Kansas City. Colangelo […]