Newsroom Stories

About 300 incoming Washington University PhD and graduate students attended orientation Aug. 21 at a secluded venue in Franklin County, in the eclipse’s path of totality. In between learning about the Graduate School’s many services and organizations, students stopped to marvel at the eclipse.

The “self” part of self-control can be a new concept for many college students. For years, they had parents and teachers to keep them on track. Then college comes, with its many demands and distractions, and students find themselves baffled by their own mistakes. Todd Braver, professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, helps students understand the complicated brain basis for self-control.

The Brown School has been awarded a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to increase sustainability of evidence-based tobacco control programs and policies. Sarah Moreland-Russell, assistant professor of practice and senior scholar to the Clark-Fox Policy Institute, will serve as principal investigator.

In what could be a small step for science potentially leading to a breakthrough, an engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has taken steps toward using nanocrystal networks for artificial intelligence applications. 

Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world. Billions of tons are produced annually. But for the 2017 Solar Decathlon, Team WashU wanted to demonstrate a new and more sustainable approach.

In the wake of the Aug. 12 confrontations between protesters and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, some progressives are calling for legal restrictions on the display of the Nazi flag. These arguments are entirely understandable, but they often misapply existing First Amendment law, and they suppress free speech values that progressives — more than anyone else — should want to defend, says a constitutional law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Should physicians be required to disclose their religious beliefs to patients? How should we think about institutional conscience in the health care setting? How should health care providers deal with families with religious objections to withdrawing treatment? These questions and more are tackled in a new book co-edited by an expert on health law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Some children born with birth defects may be at increased risk for specific types of cancer, according to a new review from the Brown School and the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

On behalf of the entire Washington University community, Chancellor Wrighton shares sympathy and support for the University of Virginia, its extended family and the city of Charlottesville, and condemns the hate, bigotry, prejudice and racism that swelled into an eruption of violence there in recent days.

President Donald Trump declaring the opioid epidemic a national emergency is an important statement and first step toward admitting a problem, said an expert on opioid addiction at Washington University in St. Louis, while warning that without science-informed solutions and plans of action, the epidemic will worsen.