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IN THIS ISSUE:
University News
Research
Features
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HEARD ON CAMPUS
“We are on the cusp of a third Industrial Revolution. In the past 25 years we have had a great revolution in communication; this coming revolution will be one of distributive energies--the energy that you can find in your backyard any day from the sun, the wind. We have enough of these distributive energies to provide for our species til kingdom comes. This third Industrial Revolution will still require everyone to be entrepreneurial, but you will only be successful to the degree that you collaborate in social networks.”
~ Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and author of 19 books on the impact of science and techonology on the economy, during his address, “The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World,” this year's Elliot H. Stein Lecture on Ethics, on October 11 in Graham Chapel
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KUDOS:
Madeleine Daepp,
a senior majoring in economics and mathematics, and Jeremy Pivor, a senior majoring in environmental biology, are finalists for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. Daepp and Pivor are among 212 out of 1,700 applicants to reach the final level of competition. |
Washington University
has helped the United Way of Greater St. Louis surpass its 2012 goal, resulting in a record year for the campaign with a total of $72,019,850. The WUSTL community contributed more than $691,000 of that total, surpassing its own goal of $675,000.
Olin Library
was honored by the U.S. Government Printing Office for excellence as a Federal Depository Library. The library was chosen based on the training opportunities it provides.
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University News
Washington University has taken a leadership role in helping to shape the future of online education by being a catalyst to bring together a consortium of the nation’s leading colleges and universities that plans to launch Semester Online. This program is transformative and a new model for online education, offering undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous online courses for credit from consortium schools. ... more
Washington University School of Medicine has received a $50 million grant to help speed the translation of scientific discoveries into improvements in human health. The grant, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), supports the School of Medicine’s Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS), one of 60 such centers in the United States. ... more
On Nov. 8, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the appointment of three new science envoys, including Barbara A. Schaal, PhD, the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. Schaal becomes WUSTL’s next dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in January. ... more
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Research
Nanostructures called BRIGHTs seek out biomarkers on cells and then beam brightly to reveal their locations. In the tiny gap between the gold skin and the gold core of the cleaved BRIGHT (visible to the upper left), there is an electromagnetic hot spot that lights up the reporter molecules trapped there.
PHOTO: Naveen Gandra
Called BRIGHTs, the tiny probes described in the online issue of Advanced Materials on Nov. 15, bind to biomarkers of disease and, when swept by an infrared laser, light up to reveal their location. Tiny as they are, the probes are exquisitely engineered objects: gold nanoparticles covered with molecules called Raman reporters, in turn covered by a thin shell of gold that spontaneously forms a dodecahedron. ... more
Respiratory conditions that restrict breathing such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are common killers worldwide. But no effective treatments exist to address the major cause of death in these conditions – excess mucus production. “There is good evidence that what kills people with severe COPD or asthma is mucus obstructing the airway,” says Michael J. Holtzman, MD, the Selma and Herman Seldin Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine. “It’s a huge unmet medical problem and is only increasing in this country and throughout the world.” ... more
People with diabetes often develop clogged arteries that cause heart disease, and new research at Washington University School of Medicine suggests that low vitamin D levels are to blame. In a study published Nov. 9 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the researchers report that blood vessels are less likely to clog in people with diabetes who get adequate vitamin D. But in patients with insufficient vitamin D, immune cells bind to blood vessels near the heart, then trap cholesterol to block those blood vessels. ... more
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Features
PHOTO: Patti/Siuzdak
Investigators at Washington University and The Scripps Research Institute have announced the launch of a “Global Metabolomic Initiative” to facilitate meta-analyses on studies of the metabolism of bacteria, yeast, plants, animals, and people. The goal of metabolomics is to take a urine, blood, or tissue sample, analyze it with an instrument called a mass spectrometer, and acquire a complete profile of all of the small molecules in the sample. The profile might reveal whether the sample donor is ill, at risk of developing a disease, has been exposed to a toxin, or is unable to tolerate a drug therapy. ... more
It’s a popularly held belief that individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) gravitate toward STEM majors in college (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). A new study, co-authored by Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University, confirms that view yet finds that young adults with an ASD also have one of the lowest overall college enrollment rates. ... more
Despite evidence supporting boardroom diversity as a driver of corporate performance, “the percentage of women directors on U.S. boards stagnated some years ago and remains at or near 12 percent, with fewer than 10 percent of boards having three or more women,” says Hillary A. Sale, JD, the Walter D. Coles professor of law at Washington University School of Law. “The pressure to add women directors is, however, growing.” ... more |
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