Alzheimer’s-like changes affect brains of elderly long before symptoms appear

Older adults with evidence of amyloid in the brain but no clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease have structures in the brain that don’t communicate readily with each other, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings may be yet another indicator that Alzheimer’s damage to the brain begins to occur long before there are clinical symptoms of the disease.  

Seismologist in the field

Most of us return from a business trip with receipts for coffee and perhaps a glass or two of wine. Doug Wiens, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, once came back with receipts for several hundred dollars of kava root.

RecycleMania 2010 a success at WUSTL

Washington University recycled 393,172 pounds of waste this spring to rank No. 35 out of 346 schools in the annual RecycleMania contest’s Gorilla category. RecycleMania is a 10-week competition that pits WUSTL against other colleges and universities to see which campus can prevent the most materials from landing in a landfill.

Notables

Of note School of Medicine student members of the Internal Medicine Interest Group — Adam Althaus, Ryan Anderson, Michael Billington, Sanyukta Desai, Kristen Grant, Miquia Henderson, Katie Hu, Kenny Lin, Tina Liou, Luke Lowry, Neil Munjal, Ima Paydar, Jennifer Reeves, Joseph Song, Maria Trissal, Julia Warren and Xiaodi Wu — recently were honored by the […]

An unforgettable teacher

Senior David Case, a chemistry major in Arts & Sciences, chats outside Holmes Lounge April 18 with Julie Jensen, his former chemistry teacher at Middleton High School in Middleton, Wis. Jensen was on campus to receive WUSTL’s Center for Advanced Learning 2010 Cornerstone Teacher Award.

WUSTL professor testifies on helium shortage

The sudden shortage of a nuclear weapons production byproduct that is critical to industries such as nuclear detection, oil and gas, and medical diagnostics was the focus as a House Science and Technology panel heard testimony today from a physics professor at Washington University in St. Louis.