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 |  WORLD LOSING BATTLE AGAINST EXTINCTIONS:
Dr. Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University, says most of those animal and plant species we are driving to extinction will vanish without us ever having known they were here.
BIOBELT INITIATIVES: Washington University and its St. Louis BioBelt partners used the June 22-25 BIO 2003 Convention in Washington, D.C., to announce the launch of four major civic initiatives designed to position St. Louis as a "location of choice" for start-up and evolving plant and life sciences companies.
A VOICE RESTORED: When Amy Hancock lost her larynx to cancer, she thought she had lost her voice forever. Three weeks later, following surgery never before done in the United States, her first words were, "Thank you!" to Randal C. Paniello, M.D., associate professor of otolaryngology, who did the surgery. More information.
Research
 EXCEPTIONALLY LONG FACES: New scientific evidence challenges a common perception that Neanderthals, a close evolutionary relative to modern humans that lived 230,000 to 30,000 years ago, possessed exceptionally long faces, according to a University anthropologist who has studied fossilized specimens.
LESS IS MORE: A procedure known as lung-volume reduction surgery appears to improve overall health and quality of life for individuals with end-stage emphysema, and these effects last as long as five years in more than half of this population, according to researchers at the School of Medicine.
RECORDING THE UNEXPECTED: On May 10, four days after a Washington University earth and planetary sciences research team had completed installing earthquake sensors on a remote tropical island 200 miles north of Guam, they witnessed the eruption of a dormant volcano there. Their hope is that data captured by their seismographs can eventually help develop a seismic early warning system.
Features
 CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP: Teach for America is making an impact on American public education, addressing educational inequity in the most under-resourced schools. Washington University alumni are part of the program.
ATKINS DIET: In the first multi-center trial to look at the high-fat, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, researchers have found that at three and six months, the Atkins diet produces significantly greater weight loss than a conventional low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.
TEACHING BY DESIGN: Nationally speaking, high-school-level courses in graphic design, as opposed to general art or special projects such as yearbooks or student newspapers, are surprisingly rare. At University City High School, School of Art majors are tutoring the fledgling program.
Heard on Campus
"Measured inflation can be too low at times as well as too high."
- Roger W. Ferguson Jr., Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, speaking to John M. Olin School of Business graduates on May 16
Kudos
Ralph G. Dacey Jr., M.D., the Henry G. and Edith R. Schwartz Professor and chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery in the School of Medicine, has been named the 2003 recipient of the prestigious Grass Foundation Award from the Society of Neurological Surgeons.
Philip Tidwell, a junior in the School of Architecture, has won the fifth annual Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence, sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley. Competition was open to undergraduate architecture majors from accredited schools around the world.
Zhirong Bao, a graduate student in genetics, was selected as one of 16 graduate students in North America and Europe to receive the 2003 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, sponsored by the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Assistant women's basketball coach Steve Cochran and assistant men's and women's swim coach Arthur Wang are among the 2003 recipients of the second annual AFLAC National Assistant Coaches of the Year Award.
Announcements
Mark your calendars now for Founders Week, September 14-20. Activities will center around the Sesquicentennial, or 150th anniversary, of the University's founding. For detailed information, see http://150.wustl.edu.
WUSTL Links
About @ Washington University in St. Louis
This newsletter is prepared by the staff of the Office of Special Development Communications Projects and the Office of Alumni and Development Programs. It is intended to provide a summary of what is happening at the University. Alumni, parents, and friends of the University for whom we have valid e-mail addresses automatically receive @ Washington University in St. Louis as a service of the University.
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