Newsroom Stories

Several Washington University in St. Louis faculty members served as panelists for a congressional briefing titled “Human Trafficking and the Impact on Children and Families,” held Nov. 14 in Washington.

First domesticated 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, wheat and barley took vastly different routes to China, with barley switching from a winter to both winter and summer crop during a thousand-year detour along the southern Tibetan Plateau, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Among the leaders expressing their concern about the proposed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is Mark S. Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University, who has written on behalf of the university to the 15 members of U.S. Congress representing Missouri and neighboring Illinois to urge them to work against several sections of the bill that would have a negative impact on students and their families, as well as university employees.

The Washington University Choirs will mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation with a free concert featuring music from the Reformation era alongside songs drawn from more recent protest movements, such as the fights for women’s suffrage and African-American civil rights.

Ten million people come to the ER with chest pain each year in the United States. A new School of Medicine study shows that these patients are getting more testing than is necessary to rule out heart attacks and that such patients do not need CT scans or cardiac stress tests, according to the researchers.

A team of scientists at Washington University in St. Louis is developing a new way to look inside the brains of the littlest patients — a technique that will provide precise measurements without requiring children to stay perfectly still or the use of ionizing radiation.

A $10 million commitment from Andrew Taylor, a life trustee at Washington University, and his wife, Barbara, will establish the Taylor Family Scholarship Challenge, which will match all new and increased gifts for undergraduate scholarships received by the conclusion of Leading Together: The Campaign for Washington University on June 30, 2018, as well as pledges to be paid by June 30, 2023. 

As the search gets underway for the next chancellor of Washington University, the search committee is eager to hear from members of the university community. To begin gathering input, the committee will host listening sessions for Danforth Campus faculty, students and staff Nov. 29 and Dec. 4 and 5. Listening sessions on the Medical Campus will be held in early 2018.

The inaugural Masters and Johnson Annual Lecture, “The Beautiful Tension: Would Masters and Johnson Have Said Sex Is More Like Dancing or Digestion?” will be presented at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14, in the Clark-Fox Forum at Hillman Hall. Leonore Tiefer, founder of the New View Campaign, which opposes medicalization of sexuality, will deliver the talk.

Can art be separated from its cultural context? In “Kiss,” Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderon explores the power, empathy and sometimes difficult responsibilities of live theater. The Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present Calderon’s funny yet searing drama Nov. 16-19.