News highlights for February 7, 2011

CisionPoint news monitoring provides this small sampling of the university's daily news coverage. Click headline to read full text via Cision or link directly to the online article where available. For questions or comments about this service, or to add or delete a name from the mailing list, please contact Gerry Everding.

UPI

Bills to restrict abortion to get hearings
02/07/2011

Expanded restrictions on federal funding of abortion get separate committee hearings this week in the U.S. House of Representatives, but observers don’t foresee the measures making it through the Senate. “They can’t expect this legislation to go beyond the House of Representatives,” said Steve Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “It allows the House Republicans to do something symbolically important for their coalition base.” Link to Article See also Charlotte News & Observer, El Nuevo Herald (Miami), Chattanooga Times Free Press, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times

Christian Science Monitor

Sarah Palin Inc. Can she trademark her name?
02/06/2011

Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol want to trademark their names — a legal action more typical of celebrity figures in sports, fashion and entertainment. Bristol Palin as a paid public speaker seems to be as controversial as her mother. Last month, Washington University in St. Louis withdrew an invitation for her to speak on a panel for “Student Sexual Responsibility Week.” Link to Article

Congressional Quarterly
S Res 10
02/04/2011

The Senate is likely to make some incremental rules changes in 2011, perhaps including some elimination of the “secret” holds and a reduction in post-cloture debate time. Congressional scholar Steven S. Smith of Washington University in St. Louis says the willingness of congressional leaders to negotiate quietly reflects a desire to avoid setting precedents on rules changes that could come back to haunt them. “What the minority would want to avoid is the precedent that a simple majority can change the rules,” Smith said. Read Full Text

Daedalus-Journal of the American Academy of Arts And Sciences

The two worlds of race revisited: A meditation on race in the age of Obama
01/01/2011

An essay by Gerald Early, the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters and Director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, explores precisely what President Obama represents in “post-racial” America. “Many hoped that Obama could permanently unify the two worlds of race: this was the prospect they found so exciting about his candidacy,” Early writes. 
Link to Article (PDF)

Daedalus-Journal of the American Academy of Arts And Sciences

Poetry in a new race era
01/01/2011

“In the age of Obama, race has surfaced in new ways,” writes Korina Jocson, an assistant professor of education at Washington University in St. Louis, in an essay on poetry in a new race era. Jocson, whose research and teaching focus on literacy, youth and cultural studies in education, contends that the quest for answers must continue — “whether in thought, in poetry or in other forms of writing. If we are to envision a hopeful world, a place rid of oppression, then we ought to will ourselves to engage in deeper conversations.” Link to Article (PDF)

SFExaminer.com

Altruistic kidney donations are on the rise, but some voice ethical concerns
02/06/2011

Some hospitals refuse to participate in altruistic organ donations, with many medical professionals simply unable to believe that someone could give away an organ to someone they do not know without a profit motive, said Dr. Amy Waterman, an assistant professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis and the vice chair of the United Network for Organ Sharing’s Living Donation Committee. “At first, people just couldn’t understand why anyone would want to donate an organ while they’re alive,” Waterman said. Link to Article

News-Leader.com (Springfield, MO)

Colleges report jump on donations
02/07/2011

Washington University in St. Louis tops a list of Missouri colleges receiving the most charitable gifts in 2010, with donations totaling $210,958,223 (up 38 percent from 2009); followed by the University of Missouri, Columbia with donations of $78,600,013 (down 23 percent); and Saint Louis University with $28,202,170 (down 33 percent). Washington University ranked 27th nationally last year with $210 million in gifts. “It was a record for us,” said David Blasingame, the executive vice chancellor for alumni and development at Washington University. Link to Article

Columbia Daily Tribune (Colimbia, MO)

Summit brings entrepreneurs, investors together
02/05/2011

For venture capitalists, Columbia was a good place to be yesterday. More than 200 people turned out for the Mid-Missouri Entrepreneurial Summit, a daylong conference at the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Alumni Center. Kenneth Harrington, who manages the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University, argued that to grow jobs, it’s no longer enough for economic developers to simply find capital or train the labor force. “It’s the connecting of collaborators that really matters,” he said. Link to Article

KTVI-TV (St. Louis, MO)

Economists weigh in on income tax proposal
02/06/2011

News host Charles Jaco questions Missouri Governor Jax Nixon on a proposal sponsored by a St. Louis millionaire to replace Missouri’s income tax with a sort of mega-sales-tax. Jaco says he’s talked to economists at both Washington University and St. Louis University, and they said to replace the income tax we’d have to raise sales tax on goods and services to anywhere between 11 and 15 percent. Nixon opposes raising the sales tax. Link to Broadcast

KSDK-TV (St. Louis, MO))

Infant volunteers needed for local autism study

2/4/2011

An infant’s brain size may be an early indicator of autism, and a local doctor is looking for volunteers to study the theory. Dr. Kelly Botteron and her colleagues at Washington University are using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI’s to measure the brain size of infants at six, 12 and 24 months of age. Both healthy infants and siblings of children with autism are needed for the study. Link to article / online video See also Fox2News (St. Louis)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

PETA please
02/05/2011

PETA is suggesting that the organization’s “Sex Talk” ad, which promotes a lifetime of abstinence for cats and dogs, be aired in place of Bristol Palin’s canceled talk about teen abstinence at Washington University. PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — sent a letter to the campus TV station, WUTV (Channel 22), asking that it air the ad, which promotes spaying or neutering cats and dogs. A spokesman for the campus TV station said Thursday that they would not air the ad. Link to Article

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Surgeries at Cochran are shuffled after shutdown Investigation is ongoing; hospital hopes to reopen operating suite Monday

02/05/2011

At least 35 patients had operations canceled this week after officials at John Cochran VA Medical Center found that surgical equipment had not been properly cleaned. Inspections of the surgical procedure rooms are ongoing and officials expect to reopen them as soon as Monday. The VA hospital’s chief of surgery, Dr. Michael Crittenden, declined to answer questions. Crittenden is also an associate professor at Washington University. Read Full Text

St. Louis Beacon

Research program goes where the people are
2/1/2011

Since 1986, Linda Bauer Cottler, professor of epidemiology in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, has been teaching epidemiology, considered the “basic science of public health,” the branch of medicine that deals with the study of the causes, spread and control of diseases in the community. Link to Article

St. Louis Beacon
Working at Siteman to make cancer a disease of the past
02/06/2011

The sole point of his parents’ lives here on earth, like many of their generation, said Timothy Eberlein, was to make sure their children were successful. That would be Timothy J. Eberlein, M.D., founding director of the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and chairman of the Department of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine. He also serves as the surgeon-in-chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Link to Article

University City Patch

Washington University dorm flooded; students displaced
02/07/2011

Washington University‘s student newspaper reports a sprinkler accident flooded areas of Wheeler House Sunday, causing students to be evacuated. According to the paper, a student jumped over a chair, hit his head on a sprinkler on the ceiling, breaking the sprinkler, which flooded the surrounding suites. Residents of the flooded suites will reportedly be displaced for at least three days. Link to Article

News in Higher Education

Boston Globe

Taking aim at the student vote

02/06/2011

It might be the ultimate town-gown issue. Are college students residents of the towns where they attend school, or are they interlopers, merely stopping in along the way with little vested interest in local affairs? The controversial question has been posed in New Hampshire, where proposed legislation would take away students’ right to vote in their college town unless they lived there before enrolling and intended to stay — a move that could have possible overtones for the first-in-the-nation primary. Link to Article

New York Times

Elite institutions are tested on diversity

2/7/2011

Criticisms leveled against universities like Cambridge and Oxford in Britain are as much about the failure to recruit a diverse student body as they are about the relative dearth of non-white students. Link to Article

New York Times

Opinion: Rising stress on campus: Looking for the causes

2/6/2011

Readers respond to an article about the record level of stress found in college freshman. Link to Article

New York Times / Business Day

Still lacking that third dimension

2/6/2011

Universities have hesitated in offering online courses for credit without assigning a human instructor, too. Link to Article

New York Times / The Choice Blog

Plea to expand enrollment at top colleges

2/4/2011

At a recent admissions conference at the University of Southern California, attendees suggested a plan to ease the pressures on those seeking seats at the nation’s most prestigious colleges. They invited the assembled admissions leaders — who included Bill Fitzsimmons of Harvard, Jeffrey Brenzel of Yale and Richard Shaw of Stanford — “to consider one simple and obvious step toward relieving the pressure: expand your enrollment.” Link to Article

For additional higher education news (subscription may be required):
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Inside Higher Ed
University Business

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