Newsroom Stories

Nearly 200 WUSTL students will volunteer their time throughout the continent during spring break, March 8-12. Dozens of groups of students will travel to places as close as Chicago and as far away as Guatemala City, Guatemala, for service projects ranging from building construction and maintenance to helping at an orphanage.

The Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing Laboratory has received a grant of $1.8 million per year for the next five years to extend and improve the Geosciences Node of the Planetary Data System, a distributed data system that archives and distributes planetary data from space missions. 

Humans have long been advised to “know thyself,” but new research suggests we may not know ourselves as well as we think we do. While individuals may be more accurate at assessing their own neurotic traits, such as anxiety, it seems friends, and even strangers, are often better barometers of traits such as intelligence, creativity and extroversion.

Senior Alex Baron, majoring in philosophy-neuroscience-psychology and in political science, both in Arts & Sciences, has won a prestigious Luce Scholarship. He is one of 18 scholars chosen nationwide.

Children with asthma who continue to have symptoms while using low-dose inhaled corticosteroids could benefit from increasing the dosage or adding one of two asthma drugs, according to a new study at the School of Medicine and other institutions. The research is published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Over the past two decades Jolly Stewart has been a force in St. Louis opera. Friday and Saturday, March 19 and 20, the Washington University Opera will celebrate Stewart’s upcoming retirement with an “all-star” performance of Die Fledermaus, the beloved operetta by Johann Strauss II. The production will feature nine returning alumni — all of whom sing professionally — as well as celebrated baritone Ian Greenlaw, teacher of applied music in Arts & Sciences.

A genome-wide study into the genetic roots of alcoholism has identified several areas of DNA that appear to contribute to the disease. But researchers say those genes make relatively modest contributions to overall risk of alcoholism.

A newly identified cancer biomarker could define a new subtype of breast cancer as well as offer a potential way to treat it, say researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The biomarker is found frequently in breast cancers that have poorer outcomes and can be inhibited by a protein discovered in the same laboratory, which could become an effective drug against the breast cancer type.

Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams are headed to the NCAA Division III tournament, which begins this weekend for both squads. The men begin at home as hosts of the first two rounds, while the women travel to Crestview Hills, Ky., to begin their postseason play.

“What goes down, must come up,” says Olin Business School’s Sam Chun. He will share tips on how businesses can prepare for economic recovery at the next “Thought Leadership Series” discussion in Kansas City, Mo.