Newsroom Stories

Long before corn was king, the women of Cahokia’s mysterious Mississippian mound-building culture were using their knowledge of domesticated and wild food crops to feed the thousands of Native Americans who flocked to what was then North America’s largest city, suggests a new book by a paleoethnobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Feeding Cahokia” sets the record straight on America’s first farmers while offering a roadmap for rediscovering the highly nutritious native foods they once cultivated, including a North American cousin of quinoa.

A combination of two topical creams lowers the risk that patients will develop squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, according to new research at the School of Medicine. The combination already has been shown to clear precancerous skin lesions from sun-damaged skin.

You — as part of the 10 percent of the American population who participates in this form of technically illegal gambling — have a 1-in-9.2 quintillion chance of picking the perfect March Madness bracket, says a statistical expert from Washington University in St. Louis.

In the first big-data study combining objective medical and compensation records with demographics, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Aarhus University in Denmark discovered once a company switches to a pay-for-performance process, the number of employees using anxiety and depression medication increased by 5.7 percent over an existing base rate of 5.2 percent.

The 14th annual African Film Festival invites St. Louisans to see eight of Africa’s most acclaimed films on the big screen. Highlights include two Kenyan films, the controversial “Rafiki,” which was banned in its own country, and “Supa Moda,” a family-friendly film that one critic called “the most important superhero movie you’ll see this year.”

The Trump Administration announced the U.S. will deny or revoke visas for International Criminal Court staff, a move aimed at deterring a potential investigation by the court into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The decision represents a rejection of the international rule of law, said Leila Sadat, director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute.

A researcher at Washington University in St. Louis travels the Americas, collecting feces from nonhuman primates to determine the risk of Zika reservoirs.

“Few chefs of African descent work at the pinnacle of our national haute cuisine today, yet their contributions to American kitchens and dining rooms have been definitive.” So argues Rafia Zafar, professor of English and of African-American studies, both in Arts & Sciences, in her new book “Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning.”

Washington University in St. Louis has been designated a “Voter-Friendly Campus” by the Campus Vote Project and NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education for its success in increasing voter registration, education and turnout.

Choreographers Harrison Parker and Rachael Servello will present a pair of new works March 23 in Edison Theatre as part of “Reel2Real,” the 2019 MFA Student Dance Concert.