Newsroom Stories

Patrick Lustman meets with a patient.A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that an antidepressant medication may reduce the risk of recurrent depression and increase the length of time between depressive episodes in patients with diabetes. Controlling depression in diabetes is important in helping patients manage their blood sugar. As depression improves, glucose levels also tend to improve. Although depression affects about 5 percent of the general population, the rate is about 25 percent for patients with diabetes. More…

Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photo”Beefing up enforcement will never put a serious dent in illegal immigration unless it goes hand in hand with major reforms of our legal immigration criteria,” says Stephen Legomsky, an internationally renowned immigration law expert at Washington University in St. Louis. He gets frustrated when he hears people suggest that undocumented immigrants are “jumping the queue,” or that undocumented immigrants “should just wait their turns like everyone else.” More…

Bob Boston/WUSTL PhotoTwo surgeons at the same hospital perform the same operations on patients with similar medical histories. Their costs to the hospital are similar, right? Not necessarily. There could be a difference as high as 45 percent. New research from Washington University in St. Louis finds that even when controlling for complexity of the operation and patient risk, surgeons incurred a wide range of hospital costs. More…

Joe Angeles/WUSTL PhotoThere are companies that, like people, are smarter than others. Literally. A business professor at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a way to measure a company’s IQ based on how effective it is at innovating. Using data from SEC filings, a professor at the Olin School of Business, computed the IQs of all the publicly traded US firms that engaged in R&D. More…

Is it all about long-term growth or short-term gains? That’s the question some finance professors at Washington University in St. Louis set out to answer when they investigated why non-financial firms are timing the interest rate market. The answer: by swapping short term, flexible interest rates for long term, fixed contracts, or vice-versa, managers may be more likely to meet analysts’ forecasts. More…

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoMemory Elvin-Lewis in the Goldfarb Greenhouse inspects a kava plant. Elvin-Lewis has written a chapter in a new book that is critical of the unregulated U.S. herbal trade.Ginsengs, echinaceas, and ephedras, oh my! These herbs sound innocuous enough, however, according to Memory Elvin-Lewis, Ph.D., professor of microbiology and ethnobotany in biomedicine in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Americans are unaware of the dangers inherent in these herbal supplements. More…

Courtesy image/WUSTL PhotoFor some deaf children, a plastic slide is a more formidable foe than the school wedgie-giver. Static electricity buildup from sliding down a plastic slide — instant summertime fun for those with normal hearing — can temporarily silence the world to cochlear implantees. Two electrical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis tested static electricity buildup — which can zap a cochlear implant — on sliding children to quantify the sparks. Thanks to some publicity and increased awareness, their research has inspired the St. Louis County Parks and Recreation Department to consider the problem, and an anti-static coating company to try to solve it. More…

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoChristine Kirmaier (left) and Dewey Holten making adjustments in their sophisticated laser laboratory. Their findings advance the understanding of photosynthesis.In the famous Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken,” the persona, forced to travel one of two roads, takes the one less traveled by, and “that has made all the difference.” Chemists at Washington University in St. Louis and Stanford University, in kinship with Frost, have modified a key protein in a bacterium to move electrons along a pathway not normally traveled by. They got this to happen 70 percent of the time. That yield “makes all the difference.” More…

Olga Pontes & Craig PikaardThe protein HDA6 shows up as a red stain in this Arabidopsis leaf cell nucleus.A team of researchers, including biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, has discovered the key role one protein plays in a major turn-off — in this case, the turning off of thousands of nearly identical genes in a hybrid plant. Studying the phenomenon of nucleolar dominance, in which one parental set of ribosomal genes in a hybrid is silenced, Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and colleagues have identified the protein HDA6 as an important player in the silencing. More…

Paul VertucioShapiro & Smith DanceEach year, the Edison Theatre OVATIONS! Series highlights music, theatre and dance by a variety of nationally and internationally acclaimed performing artists. The 2006-07 season — the Edison’s 34th — will include more than a dozen events, ranging from returning favorites to St. Louis and world premiers to the popular ovations! for young people series, which offers specially priced Saturday matinees for audiences of all ages.