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Fall Assembly Series offers intelligent voices on issues of the day

Created 60 years ago, the Assembly Series is Washington University’s premiere lecture series. Its chief mission is to present interesting and important voices, and it is designed to spark meaningful discussion and lead to greater understanding of our world today. Assembly Series programs are free and open to the public. The fall 2013 schedule, below, opens with First Year Reading Program author Eula Biss on September 9.

Humanities & Society

Whispers Café now serves frozen yogurt

The newly renovated Whispers Café introduced frozen yogurt. Other new dining options include a sushi happy hour at Ibby’s, gyros at Ursa’s and Asian street food at the Bear’s Den.

Medicine & Health

Washington People: Luis Sanchez, MD

Luis Sanchez, MD, the Gregorio A. Sicard Distinguished Professor of Vascular Surgery and chief of the section of vascular surgery at the School of Medicine, discusses his work and how his family history influenced him toward medicine.

Emergency kits for offices available

There’s now a simple way to be sure your office is prepared in case of an emergency. Washington University in St. Louis Emergency Management officials announced that managers across campus can order standard emergency preparedness kits for their offices.

Campus & Community

Welcome, Class of 2017!

About 1,600 freshmen moved onto the WUSTL campus last week to begin their college careers. Upperclass student volunteers (seen here, at a pep rally) help newcomers get settled and adjust to their first year of college life. Classes begin Tuesday, Aug. 27. Check out more photos, videos and other moments from the first day’s events.

Business & Entrepreneurship

Email privacy a hallmark of a free society

As encrypted email services like Lavabit shut their doors, the importance of email privacy becomes even more clear writes Neil Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, in a recent CNN opinion piece.

Science & Technology

Creating plants that make their own fertilizer

Much of modern agriculture relies on biologically available nitrogenous compounds (called “fixed” nitrogen) made by an industrial process developed by German chemist Fritz Haber in 1909. Himadri Pakrasi, PhD, a scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, thinks it should be possible to design a better nitrogen-fixing system. His idea is to put the apparatus for fixing nitrogen in plant cells, the same cells that hold the apparatus for capturing the energy in sunlight. The National Science Foundation just awarded Pakrasi and his team $3.87 million to explore this idea further.

Medicine & Health

Receptor may aid spread of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in brain

School of Medicine scientists have found a way that corrupted, disease-causing proteins spread in the brain, potentially contributing to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other brain-damaging disorders. Pictured are clumps of corrupted tau protein outside a nerve cell, as seen through an electron micrograph.

Medicine & Health

Alcohol abuse, eating disorders share genetic link

Part of the risk for alcohol dependence is genetic. The same is true for eating disorders. Now, School of Medicine researchers have found that some of the same genes likely are involved in both. They report that people with alcohol dependence may be more genetically susceptible to certain types of eating disorders and vice versa.

Science & Technology

Green Rehab project promotes a more sustainable university

An interdisciplinary team of researchers and students from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis is working to create a more sustainable future for the university. Over the last year, teams have developed an experimental framework for testing environmentally friendly redevelopment strategies in a group of University-owned apartment buildings north of the Delmar Loop.