Newsroom Stories

What happened on July 4, 1776? Not what you might think. On that historic day more than 200 years ago, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. But it would be weeks before the Founding Fathers actually signed the handwritten document now housed in the National Archives in Washington. In the meantime, official broadsides were printed and posted on courthouse doors across the colonies. One of those broadsides is now on view at Washington University.

Doctors sometimes prescribe antipsychotic drugs to treat behavior disorders in youths who don’t respond to traditional medications. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Florida Atlantic University have found that young people taking antipsychotics for as little as 12 weeks experience significant gains in body fat and also become less sensitive to insulin.

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 11 upheld Ohio’s efforts to purge its voter rolls. The move spreads voting discrimination across America, argues a constitutional law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

School of Medicine researchers have found that the pathways through which various types of brain cells are damaged by Alzheimer’s disease varies, depending on the genes involved. The findings are published in the journal Genome Medicine.

Fred M. Ssewamala has been installed as the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor of Social Work in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. A ceremony was held Feb. 8 in Brown Hall to mark the occasion, followed by a reception in Goldfarb Hall.

Danforth Campus 2018-19 parking permits will be available for purchase by the end of June, the university announced. The new permits will be valid Aug. 1 through July 2019.

The Curiosity Rover mission found signs of organic materials on Mars dating back about 3.5 billion years, NASA announced June 7. It could be a big deal, said Raymond Arvidson, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences.

Scientists from the School of Medicine have zeroed in on a culprit that spurs damaging inflammation in the heart following a heart attack. The guilty party is a type of immune cell that tries to heal the injured heart but instead triggers inflammation that leads to even more damage.

Foodborne illness is a serious and preventable public health problem, affecting one in six Americans and costing an estimated $50 billion annually. As local health departments adopt new tools that monitor Twitter for tweets about food poisoning, a study from Washington University in St. Louis is the first to examine practitioner perceptions of this technology.

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed tools that mathematically describe the kinetics in a system right before it dissolves into randomness.