Science & Technology

Fueled by political rhetoric about dangerous criminal immigrants, many white Americans assume low-status immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Syria, Somalia and other countries President Donald Trump labeled “shithole” nations have no legal right to be in the United States, new research in the journal American Sociological Review suggests.

A favorite Halloween symbol leaves behind clues to what a tropical landscape looked like thousands of years ago. With support from the Living Earth Collaborative, postdoctoral scholar Rachel Reid of Arts & Sciences digs in.

Gary Patti, the Michael and Tana Powell Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded $4.8 million in two separate National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants focused on improving the accessibility of metabolomics — the study of the biochemical reactions that underlie metabolism.

People often think about multiple-choice tests as tools for assessment, but they can also be used to facilitate learning. A new paper in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition offers straightforward tips for constructing multiple-choice questions that are effective at both assessing current knowledge and strengthening ongoing learning.

A National Science Foundation-funded workshop recently brought more than 75 statistics researchers to the Danforth Campus. Organized by Todd Kuffner of Arts & Sciences, this is the third year the event has been hosted at the university, and the first since math changed its name this summer to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

2016 Nobel laureate Fraser Stoddart will deliver the Weissman Lecture Oct. 4 at Washington University in St. Louis. The lecture journeys into mechanical innovations realized during the early and mid-20th century and a new type of bonding in molecules consisting of mechanical linkages. It is free and open to the public.

Anyone who peruses relationship settings on social media knows that our interactions with other humans can be complicated, but a new study in Nature Scientific Reports suggests that researchers may be overlooking some of these same complexities in the social relations of our closest primate relatives, such as chimpanzees and macaques.

New research by Karen DeMatteo, a biologist in Arts & Sciences, finds three alternative explanations beyond errors in handler or dog training that can explain why dogs trained to identify scat for conservation purposes sometimes collect non-target scats.

Why don’t you eat your friend’s lunch when you are hungry? Cognitive control. Researchers at the School of Engineering & Applied Science and Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis are working together to better understand this aspect of cognition.

More than 1,500 of the world’s preeminent aerosol scientists gathered in St. Louis for the 10th International Aerosol Conference. The School of Engineering & Applied Science helped organize the meeting and presented talks on a wide range of aerosol topics: from air quality and pollution, to better drug delivery for cancer patients.