Ronald Levin, JD, the William R. Orthwein Distinguished
Professor of Law, has been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI),
a national independent organization that focuses on producing scholarly
work to clarify and modernize the law. Membership in the ALI is based
on professional achievement and a demonstrated interest in improving the
law. ALI will also honor the Hon. William H. Webster, JD ’49, with the Henry J. Friendly Medal. One of the ALI’s highest honors, the
medal is awarded periodically to individuals who have made significant
contributions to the law.
Scientists have decoded the genome of the western painted turtle, one of the most abundant turtles on Earth, finding clues to their longevity and ability to survive without oxygen during long winters spent hibernating in ice-covered ponds.
More than 175 WUSTL volunteers recently did prep work at Gateway STEM High School — priming and taping walls, organizing supplies and competing other tasks. They cleared the way for an even larger undertaking this weekend during the Clinton Global Initiative University meeting. Approximately 800 conference delegates will perform service projects at the school.
Named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine, Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., has been selected to give the 2013 Commencement address at Washington University in St. Louis, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. The university’s 152nd Commencement ceremony will begin at 8:30 a.m. Friday, May 17, in Brookings Quadrangle.
The WUSTL men’s and women’s swimming teams are set to host their annual swim lessons on Tuesday and Thursday evenings beginning Tuesday, April 9, at the Millstone Pool. The deadline to sign up for lessons is Monday, April 8.
A team of four WUSTL students, including sophmores, Grace Kuo and Amy Patterson, shown to left accepting a trophy, won the College Nationals in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest on March 30. Click here for a video of a rolling ball bearing setting off a chain reaction in “Rube Goldberg’s office” that eventually drop a hammer on a nail–the assigned task.
A new study raises the intriguing possibility that drugs prescribed to lower cholesterol may be effective against macular degeneration, a blinding eye disease. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that age-related macular degeneration shares a common link with atherosclerosis. Both problems have the same underlying defect: the inability to remove a buildup of fat and cholesterol.
“The anthropological concept of culture is extremely important and often misunderstood because many of the things that are assumed to be biologically determined, like criminality or homosexuality or IQ, are really behaviorally and societally defined,” says WUSTL physical anthropologist Robert W. Sussman, and it forms the basis for his Phi Beta Kappa/Sigma Xi Lecture, “The Importance of the Concept of Culture
to Science and Society,” the next Assembly Series program held at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 9.
As the U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA) conclude, it looks like the justices are ready to
strike down the law, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law
expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “The
crucial thing about this case is that the Court can strike down DOMA
without impacting the right or lack thereof of someone to marry,” he
says.
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is playing a leading role in one of the National Institutes of Health’s first clinical trials to improve treatments for rare and neglected diseases. In this case, the disease is Niemann-Pick Type C, a disorder that causes excess cholesterol to accumulate in the brain, liver and spleen. It affects about 500 children worldwide, leads to neurodegeneration, and usually causes death in the first two decades of life.
