Washington University in St. Louis has received a five-year, $3 million grant to establish a new center to develop better ways to prevent and treat type 2 diabetes in high-risk patients, including American Indians and Alaska Natives, says Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD, director of the new center.
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research has announced the six winning teams of the 2011 University Research Strategic Alliance (URSA) grants. URSA grants offer a one-year, $25,000 award to full-time faculty members at WUSTL who begin a new collaboration with investigators from different disciplines. Researchers who receive the grant work together in a new area of research, or plan to approach a problem in a different way.
WUSTL will celebrate Campus Sustainability Week Monday, Oct. 17, through Saturday, Oct. 22, on the Danforth and Medical campuses. WUSTL’s Campus Sustainability Week — along with national Campus Sustainability Day, Thursday, Oct. 20 — is held to bring attention to the achievements and challenges for students, faculty and staff in working to instill sustainability principles in higher education institutions and their surrounding communities.
A new series, called the Danforth Dialogues, demonstrates how persons with profoundly different views can engage each other forcefully and respectfully. Sen. John C. Danforth moderated the first discussion between Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind. The series is co-sponsored by the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics.
Get your dancing shoes ready. Oct. 14 is the sign-up deadline to register for the annual Dance Marathon. Washington University in St. Louis hosts the student-run marathon, which will take place Saturday, Nov. 5, from 2 p.m.-2 a.m. in the Athletic Complex. Proceeds benefit Children’s Miracle Network of Greater St. Louis.
Twelve current or former Washington University in St. Louis students have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarships to study, conduct research and/or teach English abroad for the 2011-12 academic year. They are among 1,600 U.S. citizens who will spend a full academic year in a host country through the Fulbright Program.
The Department of Energy has funded a three-university collaboration led by Washington University in St. Louis to approach the problem of algal fuels systematically.In a two-step project, the team will first attempt a comprehensive understanding of the metabolic machinery of selected cyanobacterial strains and then implement that understanding by assembling a novel bacterium with the machinery needed to produce fuel molecules. They will be bringing to bear on the problem of algal fuels the most sophisticated approaches contemporary biology now has to offer: systems biology and synthetic biology.
Take a walk on the second floor of North Brookings Hall past the Bridge Conference Room, and you’ll see a different take on a familiar face. A painting of Robert S. Brookings, president of WUSTL’s Board of Trustees from 1895-1928, arrived in September and now hangs on the west-facing wall. The new portrait was painted in 1905 by noted American Impressionist artist Richard E. Miller and replaced another painting of Brookings in the Bridge Conference Room.
Cultivars of popular ornamental woody plants that are being sold in the United States as non-invasive are probably anything but, according to an analysis by a Washington University in St. Louis botanical researcher published in the October issue of BioScience.
High-dose vitamin E supplements increase the risk of prostate cancer, results of a large clinical trial show. The study’s findings, published Oct. 12, 2011, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on an updated review of data from the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT).
