Humanities & Society

The U.S. House of Representatives Republican tax proposal, released Nov. 2, would institute a number of wholesale changes to the American tax code, including the end of neutrality in the international tax system, says an expert on international tax law at Washington University in St. Louis.

The bipartisan bill proposed by U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray, aimed at shoring up the troubled health insurance markets, has some approaches that would help fix the marketplaces, but more changes are needed, says a health economist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Malnutrition problems can be traced to poor-quality diets lacking in diversity, a recent phenomenon in evolutionary history, according to a new paper from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

The First Amendment does not give Masterpiece Cakeshop and its owner, Jack Phillips, the license to discriminate against gay couples, as businesses open to the general public have a longstanding obligation to provide full and equal service to customers, argues a legal scholar at Washington University in St. Louis.

President Donald Trump’s Oct. 26 announcement that the opioid epidemic is a “public health emergency” rather than a “national emergency” goes against the understanding of most authorities, said an expert on substance use disorder treatment at Washington University in St. Louis.

A young Neandertal left deaf and partially paralyzed by a crippling blow to the head about 40,000 years ago must have relied on the help of others to avoid prey and survive well into his 40s, suggests a new analysis published Oct. 20 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

For Ira Kodner, MD, emeritus professor of surgery, Frankenstein has many ethical lessons for young scientists, physicians and society at large.

As a linguist and professor at Swarthmore, one might wonder why Jamie Thomas, AB ’06, is interested in zombies. She’s found that representations of the undead can help us better understand the dehumanization and fear that accompany racism, sexism and other languages of hate.

New mothers in poor urban communities may feel the necessity to work and have a measure of food security rather than trying to find the time and ability for exclusive breastfeeding, a health issue that could be rectified with social support, researchers from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis found in a study in Haiti.

Nearly 200 years after the publication of “Frankenstein” in 1818, we still employ Mary Shelley’s dream vision to interpret and explain our world today — but why? Perhaps because the troubling dialectic between Creator and Monster reflects some basic anxiety that has still not been resolved. Henry Schvey writes an essay in advance of the Oct. 13 conference “Frankenstein at 200” in Umrath Hall on the Danforth Campus.