Humanities & Society

Cervical cancer is one of the easiest cancers to detect early. It’s also one of the easiest to treat, if caught early. WUSM researchers even developed a method for gauging the effectiveness of treatment to determine the best therapy for each patient, but many insurance companies and Medicaid won’t pay for the process – a routine PET scan. Kay Quinn provides more details in the following St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Washington University in St. Louis — consistently ranked among America’s 20 best national universities — is now ranked 12th in the best value category titled “Great schools, great prices,” an increase of two spots over last year, according to new undergraduate rankings released by U.S. News & World Report magazine. The university is tied with Northwestern University for 11th place in undergraduate programs among the nation’s best national universities.

Extending supervised outpatient rehabilitation by six months helps elderly patients more fully recover from hip fractures, according to the first controlled study of its kind. The study also showed for the first time that these patients, previously thought to be too frail for weight training, can benefit from progressive resistance exercise training.

With the November election quickly approaching, many people want to know more about the key issues facing the candidates. If that’s you, then you need to educate yourself! “Educate Yourself: 2004,” sponsored by Student Union, will comprise a series of weekly forums aimed at helping the University community, and the public, fully understand all sides of some of the larger issues in the upcoming election.

A page entitled, “Rankings of WUSTL by News Media.”

The aim is to help the University community fully understand all sides of some of the key political issues.

Washington University in St. Louis, host of a presidential debate scheduled for Oct. 8, 2004, offers the media a rich source of expertise on presidential politics and related campaign issues. The University has a strong connection to modern presidential politics, having been selected to host presidential debates in each election since 1992. Presidential debates were […]

Courtesy NASA/JPL-CaltechEngaging students in the power of mathematics is key to a strong curriculum.As parents are taking advantage of back-to-school sales and stocking up on supplies like calculators, pens and pencils, a math education expert at Washington University in St. Louis suggests they also may want to check out the quality of their children’s math education. According to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the United States continues to lag further behind other developed nations in mathematics education. A critical part of the solution, says Jere Confrey, Ph.D., professor of education in Arts & Sciences, is for school districts to select and implement a solid curriculum with interesting, compelling and rigorous mathematics and then to carefully monitor and evaluate students’ progress while using that curriculum.

David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoBottled water or tap? A WUSTL environmental engineer specializing in aquatic chemistry sees no difference between the two in terms of health.Paying extra for bottled water? You may be wasting your money, says an expert in aquatic chemistry. Daniel Giammar, Ph.D., a faculty member in the Environmental Engineering Science Program at Washington University in St. Louis, says that tap water is just as safe to drink as bottled water. He also says that the pricey bottled water you value so highly might well be nothing more than repackaged tap water. “The tap water we drink meets very strict standards that are designed to protect our health,” Giammar says. “These are developed over many years of study and they all include fairly large factors of safety. Any differences between tap and bottled water, in terms of health, are negligible.”

WUSTL researchers are investigating how to infuse grains with folate typically found in green vegetables such as broccoli.A team of researchers led by Karel Schubert, Ph.D., affiliate research biology professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, recently achieved a breakthrough to enhance levels of folate, a vitamin essential to human and animal health, in the model plant Arabidopsis.