Mednews other

A memorial service for Abdullah M. Nassief, M.D., associate professor of neurology, will be held at 1 p.m. May 9 in Connor Auditorium in the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center at the School of Medicine. Friends, colleagues, patients and former students are all invited to remember his extraordinary life.

The Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging is hosting the 2009 Friedman Conference April 21 at the Eric P. Newman Education Center from 8:30 a.m.-1 p.m. The conference, titled “In the Words of the Artist: The Influence of Age on Creativity and Expression,” focuses on the ways artists experience the aging process and how it affects creativity and expression.

The School of Medicine is now on Twitter. Stay connected and to keep up with the latest news, research discoveries and events from your web browser or from your mobile device via text message.

To stand, walk, run or ride a bike, people rely greatly on the sensory apparatus of the vestibular system located in the inner ears. Two million people in the United States live with chronic imbalance as the result of vestibular system malfunction. Joel Goebel, M.D., director of the Dizziness and Balance Center at the School of Medicine, wanted to help people with vestibular malfunction better navigate through their surroundings. So he collaborated on building a device, worn on the head, that alerts wearers that they are leaning so they can upright themselves.

A March 30th symposium will commemorate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth by bringing together four leading geneticists whose research focuses on defining the DNA changes that distinguish humans from our closest evolutionary relatives, the non-human primates.

Last year, Chuck Rickert, a fifth-year student in the M.D./Ph.D. program at the School of Medicine, heard a show about kidney donation on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation.” One of the callers, a man in his 50s on dialysis, said his blood type did not match any friends or family, and his only option for a new kidney was to wait for something bad to happen to a younger person. The distressed man’s call stuck with Rickert, who eventually decided to anonymously donate one of his own kidneys.

In January, 18 School of Medicine faculty were presented with Distinguished Faculty Awards, which recognize outstanding achievements in clinical care, community service, research and teaching.

Several hundred physicians at Washington University School of Medicine are among the nation’s finest, according to two surveys of thousands of U.S. doctors. More than 300 Washington University physicians have been named to The Best Doctors In America for 2008. The number is nearly three times that of any other physicians’ group in St. Louis and more than any other physicians’ group in the Midwest.

Hearing aid manufacturers are constantly developing more sophisticated instruments, yet remarkably, studies show that user satisfaction hasn’t increased much, if at all. A group of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis wondered if they could address this problem by teaching people with hearing loss how to listen better.

If you’re looking to reduce facial wrinkles or enhance your lips without surgery, you’re not alone. Increasingly, consumers are choosing non-surgical procedures that use injectable fillers to improve their appearance. With a wide range of injectable fillers available, consumers must spend some time evaluating their options, says Gregory Branham, a facial plastic surgeon at the School of Medicine.