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Humanities & Society

Reward-driven people win more, even when no reward at stake

Whether it’s for money, marbles or chalk, the brains of reward-driven people keep their game faces on, helping them win at every step of the way, even when there is no reward at stake, suggests a surprising Washington University in St. Louis brain scan study published online today by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Racing to succeed

Senior engineering student Katharine Brown (center) shows her research project involving the university’s Formula SAE race car April 17 outside Seigle Hall, where the spring undergraduate research symposium poster presentations took place. More than 150 students participated in the symposium, which provides a forum for undergraduate students to showcase their research projects.

Character of service

Honoree Joanna Perdomo (center), a junior philosophy-neuroscience-psychology major in Arts & Sciences, visits with proud father Jose Perdomo (right) and senior Emily Heins (left) during a reception for the winners of the 2010 Gerry and Bob Virgil Ethic of Service Award April 15 at the Knight Center.

WUSTL on track to become tobacco-free July 1

All WUSTL campuses will be tobacco-free beginning July 1 — less than 10 weeks from today. To that end, the university continues to offer tobacco cessation resources for students, faculty and staff and is assisting supervisors with the transition to a tobacco-free environment. At 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, April 27, in Seigle Hall, Room 304, the Office of Human Resources is sponsoring a program for supervisors titled “The Tobacco-Free Environment: Understanding the Impact.” 
Medicine & Health

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.