Newsroom Stories

Risa Zwerling Wrighton (center) greets Elaine Greenbaum during the Woman’s Club of Washington University’s Fall Welcome Lunch at Harbison House Sept. 14. The club, which is celebrating its centennial in 2010, offers members opportunities to form friendships and grow intellectually through luncheons, lectures, tours and programs.

Approximately 1,600 members of the Class of 2014 arrived on campus this past August. Nearly all the freshmen graduated in the top 5 percent or 10 percent of their high school class, and more than 60 percent traveled at least 500 miles from their hometowns to WUSTL. “We were impressed with their talents and abilities, as they stood out among the finest students in their high schools around the world,” says Julie Shimabukuro, director of admissions.

WUSTL’s campus-wide entrepreneurship curriculum has been recognized as one of the best in the country by The Princeton Review survey published in Entrepreneur magazine today.  WUSTL’s undergrad and graduate programs placed in the top ten out of more than 2000 schools. A venture started by three WUSTL students also is featured in the October magazine on newsstands and online Sept. 21.

“Japan Embodied: New Approaches to Japanese Studies,” is a four-semester Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series that examines the way the body has been discussed, experienced, and imagined in Japanese culture. The first seminar begins at 3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, in Room 18, Busch Hall. The seminars, which are free and open to the public, will continue with events each semester through spring 2012.

CBS News Alzheimer’s brain tangles offer clue to worsening If scientists could figure out how to lower tau levels, it might slow dementia, says senior researcher Alison Goate of Washington University in St. Louis. The only available medications temporarily ease symptoms but don’t slow the disease. Goate’s work is a first step at identifying genetic […]

Acclaimed author Jonathan Safron Foer, whose latest book, Eating Animals, chronicles his lifelong journey toward vegetarianism, will be on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 30, in Graham Chapel (please note that this is a location change.) The Assembly Series lecture, co-sponsored by University Libraries, the Campus Bookstore and the senior honorary Mortar Board, is free and open to the public.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon leaves Washington University’s Brauer Hall with his wife, Georganne Wheeler Nixon, Friday, Sept. 17, after outlining his vision for Missouri’s energy future before a group of CEOs and other leaders of major energy producers and industrial and commercial energy consumers at the “Energy Policy Discussion.” The meeting was co-sponsored by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

This fall, the Department of Computer Science & Engineering  in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis is holding a five-part lecture series on cyber-physical systems, a topic increasingly recognized as key to the future competitiveness of U.S. industry. The first talk will be Friday, Sept. 24.

Associated Press A new clue in solving Alzheimer’s puzzle 09/20/2010 That sticky gunk coating Alzheimer’s patients’ brains gets all the notoriety, but another culprit is gaining renewed attention. A second protein called tau seems to signal how aggressive the mind-robbing disease will be. Researchers discovered that patients with mild Alzheimer’s and high levels of tau […]

Sports updates for the week of Sept. 20, 2010