Arts & Sciences

Deanna Barch (center) discusses brain imaging techniques used in the experiment, which used the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine (shown at right).When encouraged to use memorization strategies commonly employed by healthy individuals, people with schizophrenia can be helped to remember information just as well as their healthy counterparts, a process that in itself seems to spur a normalization of memory-related activities in the brains of people with schizophrenia, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Written in a plainspoken and often humorous style, the memoir offers a fresh and engaging perspective on Reagan’s leadership style and motivations.

He joins Lee Epstein, Ph.D., professor of political science, and Murray L. Weidenbaum, Ph.D., professor of economics, as the third Mallinckrodt professor in Arts & Sciences.

The grant from Hewlett-Packard was for 21 wireless tablet PCs with docking stations, along with a digital camera, portable projector and printer.

Abnormal heart rate variability increases the risk of death for depressed heart patients.Scientists have known for years that depression increases the risk of dying in the months after a heart attack, but they haven’t understood how depression raises that risk. Now, behavioral medicine specialists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are reporting in the Archives of Internal Medicine that abnormal heart rate variability is partially responsible for depression’s effects in heart patients.

Deanna Barch (right), co-author of a memory study that used a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (shown in the background) to monitor the brain activity of people with schizophrenia.When encouraged to use memorization strategies commonly employed by healthy individuals, people with schizophrenia can be helped to remember information just as well as their healthy counterparts, a process that in itself seems to spur a normalization of memory-related activities in the brains of people with schizophrenia, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

For nearly a quarter century, Murray Weidenbaum has said little about what it was like to serve as the first chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, a role in which he was a primary architect of policies later known as “Reaganomics.” Now, one year after Reagan’s passing, Weidenbaum has issued a brief memoir detailing his years as the president’s chief economic adviser.

“Let’s talk about condoms.” Whether or not that conversational topic is introduced in a budding romantic relationship may depend on what type of condom-promotion messages the partners have heard. The way messages promoting condom-use are framed influences the effectiveness of the messages, according to a recent study co-authored by Dee Lisa Cothran, Ph.D., who conducted extensive research on the topic as a psychology doctoral student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoAngenent and He’s microbial fuel cell may be scaled up for industrial use.An environmental engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has created a device similar to a hydrogen fuel cell that uses bacteria to treat wastewater and create electricity. Lars Angenent, Ph.D., assistant professor of Chemical Engineering, and a member of the University’s Environmental Engineering Science Program, has devised a microbial fuel cell which he calls an upflow microbial fuel cell (UMFC) that is fed continually and, unlike most microbial fuel cells, works with chambers atop each other rather than beside each other.

A modification to an “ace” gene prediction program now enables scientists to predict the very beginnings of gene transcription start sites, thereby defining the first exon of the gene. The modification to the gene prediction software TWINSCAN is called N-SCAN. Michael Brent, Ph.D. professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, together with Samuel S. Gross, then an undergraduate at Washington University, and Randall H. Brown, Ph.D., a research scientist, report their results in the May 2005 issue of Genome Research.