Newsroom Stories

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests the gut microbiome has an impact on how the body breaks down processed foods, such as cereals, pastas, chocolate and soda. The new knowledge could help in the development of healthier, more nutritious processed foods.

A longtime leader in microbiome research, the School of Medicine plans to expand research into the microbiome with a new mouse facility that will further enable researchers to understand how microbes influence health and disease. The facility will be funded with an $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health and an additional $2.8 million from the School of Medicine.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis will present “Decoys & Depictions: Images of the Digital,” a symposium exploring how digital images are constructed and operate, Oct. 24-26.

The fifth annual Olin Sports Business Summit convenes Oct. 18 in Knight Hall’s Emerson Auditorium. The 2019 lineup features numerous presentations from industry executives at professional basketball, football and soccer teams.

Himadri B. Pakrasi, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and director of InCEES, was recently awarded a $1.2-million grant for a collaborative study of cyanobacteria with the ultimate purpose of producing nitrogen-fixing crop plants.

Under principles of free speech, anyone — such as Chinese state television — is entitled to hold their view of anything, including the scope of freedom of speech, says Gregory Magarian, as Constitutional law expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis confirms that the brain tunes itself to a point where it is as excitable as it can be without tipping into disorder, similar to a phase transition. The new research from Keith Hengen, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, is published Oct. 7 in the journal Neuron.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis realizes one of the first parity time-symmetric quantum systems, allowing scientists to observe how that symmetry — and the breaking of it — leads to previously unexplored phenomena. These and future PT symmetry experiments have potential applications to quantum computing. The work from the laboratory of Kater Murch, associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is published Oct. 7 in the journal Nature Physics.

New research from Olin Business School finds that when a video game-making firms change a game’s rewards schedule and how it limits how long gamers can play in a sitting, the firm can actually make more money — and users devote a smaller share of their time on gaming.

A multi-institutional effort that includes the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis will bring man and machine together in an effort to accelerate the process of discovery of new materials.