A test that reveals brain changes believed to be at the heart of Alzheimer’s disease has bolstered the theory that education can delay the onset of the dementia and cognitive decline that are characteristic of the disorder. Scientists at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the School of Medicine found that some study participants who appeared to have the brain plaques long associated with Alzheimer’s disease still received high scores on tests of their cognitive ability. Participants who did well on the tests were likely to have spent more years in school.
Mark Twain, a skeptic of the idea of free will, argues in his essay “What Is Man?” that humans do not command their minds or the opinions they form. Twain’s views get a boost this week from researchers at the School of Medicine and University of Chieti, Italy. In Nature Neuroscience, scientists report that a simple decision-making task does not involve the frontal lobes, where many of the higher aspects of human cognition, including self-awareness, are thought to originate.
The Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Program is seeking applications from junior faculty with a medical degree, doctorate or M.D./Ph.D. who are pursuing a research career in areas relevant to women’s health. These include autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, depression, complications of pregnancy, diabetes and obesity, osteoporosis, infectious diseases and cancer. The program supports […]
“The increasing number of veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) raises the risk of domestic violence and its consequences on families and children in communities across the United States,” says Monica Matthieu, Ph.D., an expert on veteran mental health and an assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis. Treatments for domestic violence are very different than those for PTSD. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has mental health services and treatments for PTSD, yet these services need to be combined with the specialized domestic violence intervention programs offered by community agencies for those veterans engaging in battering behavior against intimate partners and families.”
Wind power is one practical alternative to petroleum.The director of a sustainable energy research center at Washington University in St. Louis is challenging President-elect Barack Obama to set goals in energy research and implementation. “I would like to see the next president of the United States set a similar goal to President Kennedy’s from 1961 — to put a man on the moon and to bring him back to Earth by the end of the decade,” says Himadri B. Pakrasi, Ph.D., the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, and Professor of Energy in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
CrissIt’s a 500-pound gorilla that Robert Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, sees standing on the speaker’s dais at political rallies, debates and campaigns. Its name is population growth. And sometime during President-elect Barack Obama’s first several months in office, he will have to factor it into future environmental policy, says Criss.”Population growth is driving all of our resource problems, including water and energy. The three are intertwined,” Criss says. “The United States has over 305 million people of the 6.7 billion on the planet. We are dividing a finite resource pie among a growing number of people on Earth. We cannot expect to sustain exponential population growth matched by increased per capita use of water and energy. It’s troubling. But politicians and religious leaders totally ignore the topic.”
F. Scott Kieff, J.D., professor of law, has been named a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He joins an esteemed roster that includes Nobel Laureates such as Washington University’s Douglass C. North, Ph.D., the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences. An expert on the interface among […]