Newsroom Stories

A School of Medicine study of adults with lumbar scoliosis and found that the most important factor in determining whether to do surgery is the extent of a patient’s disability due to his or her spinal deformity, as well as how much that disability interferes with day-to-day life.

Rohan Mishra, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science in the McKelvey School of Engineering, led a widespread team of researchers — including at Washington University, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and at the University of Missouri-Columbia — that studied the structure and properties of the commonly occurring planar defects at the atomic scale, which spans only a few tenths of a nanometer.

Long before Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and even MySpace, early Mississippian Mound cultures in America’s southern Appalachian Mountains shared artistic trends and technologies across regional networks that functioned in similar ways as modern social media, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University in St. Louis will introduce two pilot grants to help low-income first-year students buy college necessities. They include a $500 grant to cover or offset the cost of a computer and a $1,500 startup grant to cover necessities such as books, winter clothing and housing supplies. The grants are for first-year students entering in fall 2019 from families with less than $75,000 in family income or who are receiving a federal Pell Grant.

Four campus leaders — Adrienne Davis, Emelyn dela Peña, Nicole Hudson and Sherree Wilson — have joined forces to strengthen diversity and inclusion initiatives across campuses and populations. It’s a new effort and one that is unusual among universities. The leaders will speak this week at the Day of Discovery, Dialogue & Action.

A Washington University in St. Louis expert in African policy says Nigeria’s upcoming presidential vote is a consequential event, one that will determine critical steps forward for Africa’s most populous country and largest economy.

Stephen Legomsky, an immigration law expert at Washington University in St. Louis, comments on the Feb. 15 announcement of a state of emergency by President Donald Trump. “This much is crystal clear,” he said. “There is no national security emergency at the southern border.”

Bestselling author Irshad Manji, keynote speaker for the fifth annual Day of Discovery, Dialogue & Action event Feb. 19 and 20, talks about her notion of moral courage and how that relates to diversity. Her talk, “Moving Beyond Labels: A Conversation About Diversity, Bigotry & Common Humanity,” begins at 5 p.m. Feb. 19 at the Eric P. Newman Education Center on the Medical Campus.

Ray Arvidson, professor of Earth and planetary sciences and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor, talks about the end of Opportunity’s longer-than-expected 15-year mission — he was the deputy principal investigator for the Mars exploration rover for NASA.

A survey of Medicaid members found that increasing levels of unmet social needs were positively associated with stress, smoking and chronic conditions, according to new research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.