Humanities & Society

Lora Iannotti, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, was working in Haiti when an earthquake devastated that country three years ago this month. She has been back to Haiti 10 times since Jan. 12, 2010, and says the country is “literally aching for public health expertise, yet not one public health degree program exists anywhere.”

A groundbreaking study on young adults with autism, led by Washington University in St. Louis researcher Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School, has been chosen as one of the “Top Ten Autism Research Advances of 2012” by the advocacy organization Autism Speaks.​

Robert Bork was a major figure in the history of American law, and of the Supreme Court, says Neil Richards, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and former law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. “There is a great irony to Bork’s death this week, a day after the House of Representatives voted to relax the privacy protections in the so-called “Bork Bill,” the federal law that protects the privacy of our video records.”

There’s nothing wrong with a cookie or a glass of eggnog at the holidays, says Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD, director of the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research and the Center for Diabetes Translation Research at Washington University in St. Louis and associate dean for research at the Brown School. The key, Haire-Joshu says, is balance.

A new study out of Washington University in St. Louis is one of the first to use technology to effectively measure the use of built environments — parks, greenways, trails and other man-made public areas — as a means to improve public health. The study, “Emerging Technologies: Webcams and Crowd-Sourcing to Identify Active Transportation,” is being published this week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Lead author is J. Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor of public health at the Brown School.

Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is director of the Center for Violence and Injury Protection, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is also a faculty scholar in WUSTL’s Institute for Public Health. She responds to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Ah, the Christmas season. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. A time to celebrate peace, love and the religious beliefs of America’s religious majority – whether you like it or not.

While many may see “taking Christ out of Christmas” as a recent phenomenon, the roots of secular Christmas celebrations and commercialization go deep into American history, says Anne Blankenship, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate at the John C. Danforth Center for Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

As the holidays draw near, expect the usual onslaught of well-intentioned suggestions for lifestyle changes guaranteed to make you healthier, wealthier and wiser in the new year. Talk is cheap, but these 13 New Year’s resolutions for 2013 are backed up by decades of research. If your resolve needs strengthening, click through the embedded web links to learn more about the research behind the resolutions, including tips on using your smart phone to quit smoking and the best way to pay down your holiday debt.

WUSTL and its academic and corporate partners worldwide are putting research into action and leading a major initiative in Mumbai, India, Dec. 6-12 to address global energy and environmental solutions. The WUSTL-led McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environmental Partnership (MAGEEP) — a consortium of 28 international universities — is convening in Mumbai for the Fourth International Symposium on Energy and Environment: ACCESS. The symposium is co-hosted by Washington University, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay.