Flags lowered to half-staff Sunday

The U.S. and university flags over Brookings Hall will be lowered to half-staff from sunrise through sunset Sunday, May 15, in honor of Peace Officers Memorial Day.

Persistent childhood asthma sets stage for COPD

Children with mild to moderate persistent asthma are at greater risk of developing chronic lung disease as young adults and, therefore, may require lifelong treatment even if their asthma symptoms subside for extended periods, according to a major national study co-led by researchers at the School of Medicine.

Blackboard outage May 20-21

Faculty, staff and students, take note: the university’s Blackboard service will be unavailable from 3 p.m. Friday, May 20, until 3 p.m. Saturday, May 21, while Information Technology performs an upgrade.

Huntington’s Disease target of $4.5 million in NIH grants

Rohit V. Pappu, the Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has received two grants from the National Institutes of Health totaling more than $4.5 million to study the causes behind Huntington’s disease that may ultimately provide clues for a treatment or cure.

Cause and effect, or effect and cause?

A lab at Washington University in St. Louis is one of the first in the world to look at spontaneous emission with an instrument sensitive to the wave rather than the particle nature of light. Because the light is entangled with the atom that emitted it, this kind of detection may provide a way to control the quantum state of the atom.