Use your smart phone to help you quit smoking​

Smoking is both a physical addiction to nicotine and a learned psychological behavior, so the best way to quit is to attack it from both sides, says Sarah Shelton of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. And help may be right at your fingertips in the form of your smartphone.

Video: A collaboration of hands and minds

James Siena is a New York-based artist whose complex, rule-based linear abstractions, or “visual algorithms,” result in intensely concentrated, vibrantly colored, freehand geometric patterns. This fall, Siena served as the Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Visiting Artist at Island Press, the nationally known print shop in WUSTL’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts.

Washington People: Suresh Vedantham

They said it couldn’t be done. Suresh Vedantham, MD, professor of radiology and surgery, was planning a nationwide trial comparing treatments for deep vein thromboses — dangerous blood clots in the legs’ major veins. Prior attempts had failed to meet recruitment goals, but Vedantham was eager to test a new approach. Four years later, recruitment for ATTRACT (Acute Venous Thrombosis: Thrombus Removal with Adjunctive Catheter-Directed Thrombolysis), his NIH-sponsored trial, has crossed the halfway mark.

Fundraising flourishes as Dance Marathon awareness spreads​

Some 900 students have signed up to dance all night in the 14th annual St. Louis Area Dance Marathon. The 12-hour event begins at 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 3, in the Athletic Complex Field House, and lasts until 2 a.m. the next day. Faculty and staff are encouraged to take part, too, with Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton donating $14 for every employee who attends the reception. Proceeds benefit Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals of Greater St. Louis.

Poet Mark Wunderlich to read Oct. 25

In The Anchorage, his debut collection, poet Mark Wunderlich creates a central metaphor of the body as anchor for the soul, in poems located in New York’s summer streets, in the barren snowfields of Wisconsin, and along stretches of Cape Cod’s open shoreline. On Thursday, Oct. 25, Wunderlich will read from his work for The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Service First​ volunteers brighten area public schools

WUSTL volunteers painted bleachers at University City High School Oct. 13, as part of Service First. Through this annual community service event, organizers work with principals of KIPP: Inspire Academy, St. Louis and University City public schools to identify needs.