Arts & Sciences

It gives public-school teachers an opportunity to re-experience the passion of American history as told through primary sources.

A new study shows spending on federal regulatory agencies exceeds the growth of the overall federal budget. Despite President Bush’s vow to limit discretionary spending to 3.9%, the 2005 Budget requests $39.1 billion in outlays for federal regulatory activities, a 4.2% real increase over the appropriated 2004 budget.

It’s a bug-eat-bug world found in this seemingly innocuous, surprisingly revealing, ecosystem.If you think your place is a dump, try living in a tree hole: a dark flooded crevice with years of accumulated decomposing leaves and bugs, infested with bacteria, other microbes, and crawling with insect larvae. A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has studied the ecosystem of the tree hole and the impact that three factors — predation, resources and disturbance — have on species diversity.

Festival Hall at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition The World’s Greatest Fair, a feature-length documentary about the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, will premiere at St. Louis’ Fabulous Fox Theatre July 10, with additional screenings at the Tivoli Theatre July 12. The film, intended for national distribution, features several Washington University faculty and staff, including Steve Givens, Carol Diaz-Granados, Jeff Pike and Trebor Tichenor.

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will present its 41st season of free outdoor concerts with a trio of performances in Washington University’s Brookings Quadrangle July 11, 18 and 25.

Growing new organs to take the place of damaged or diseased ones is moving from science fiction to reality, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Scientists have previously shown that embryonic tissue transplants can be used to grow new kidneys inside rats. In their latest study, though, they put the new kidneys to an unprecedented and critical test, removing the rat’s original kidneys and placing the new kidneys in position to take over for them. The new kidneys were able to successfully sustain the rats for a short time.

Courtesy NASA/JPL/CornellArtist’s rendition of the rover on Mars.Washington University faculty, staff and students are making critical contributions to the success of NASA’s ongoing rover mission to Mars. Visit here for links to the latest news on the 2004 Mars Rover Mission, as well as background on other Mars-related research at Washington University.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have made the surprising discovery that people with Alzheimer’s disease retain the capability for a specific form of memory used for rote learning of skills, even though their memories of people and events are extinguished. The scientists’ discovery suggests new strategies to improve training and rehabilitative programs that may bolster the retained cognitive function of those with Alzheimer’s disease and healthy older people.

Photo courtesy of Alzheimer’s Association, St. Louis ChapterA WUSTL psychologist says there is little consensus among doctors when it comes to disclosing a dementia diagnosis to patients and their caregivers.To tell or not to tell, that is the question. Should Alzheimer’s disease patients be told of the diagnosis? If so, when, how and by whom? Brian D. Carpenter, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, conducted a review of related study literature that shows there is little consensus among clinicians on the issue of disclosing a dementia diagnosis and great room for much more research. Carpenter’s review, done with research assistant Jennifer Dave, was published in the April 2004 issue of The Gerontologist. “If contemporary debate and practice are any indication, there is no consensus on these matters,” Carpenter says in the article “Disclosing a Dementia Diagnosis: A Review of Opinion and Practice, and a Proposed Research Agenda.”

That’s using your brain. For the first time in humans, a team headed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains.