Newsroom Stories

The U.S. Treasury Department has issued several rules recently aimed at cracking down on tax evasion and money laundering in the wake of the “Panama Papers.” Will continuing to add new, and increasingly aggressive, rules make any lasting or concrete changes to the American tax code? Maybe, but perhaps at a cost to the tax law as a whole, says Washington University tax expert Adam Rosenzweig.

In many workplaces, standard processes are the key to a successful operation, ensuring efficiency and safety. New research from Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis shows that motivating compliance with standard processes via electronic monitoring can be a highly effective approach, despite concerns about employee backlash. However, the research also highlights that managers cannot simply “monitor and forget.”

Each year, Washington University in St. Louis highlights our graduating seniors and graduate students who are changing the world through research, service and innovation. Here are the 2016 Class Acts.

Signaling a potential new approach to treating diabetes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University have produced insulin-secreting cells from stem cells derived from patients with type 1 diabetes.

Two School of Medicine scientists have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. They are Kenneth M. Murphy, MD, PhD, and Herbert W. “Skip” Virgin IV, MD, PhD, both of the Department of Pathology and Immunology. Election to the academy is among the highest honors that can be awarded to a U.S. scientist or engineer.

On May 6, President Barack Obama introduced executive reforms designed to eliminate loopholes that allow foreigners to conceal tax fraud and evasion in the United States. Olin Business School’s Lamar Pierce said the move is an effort to show U.S. global partners that it is ready to practice what it preaches when it comes to curbing shadowy financial transactions.

Researchers in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered a novel route to encode chaos on light in an optomechanical microresonator system.

“Between the World and Me” by acclaimed writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, is the 2016 First Year Reading Program selection. Written as a letter to Coates’ teenage son, the book is both a tender memoir and a biting polemic that explores America’s long and persistent history of racial injustice. All first-year students will participate in a discussion about the book this fall.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that some neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex assign value to options in everyday decision-making. The area’s neurons then can re-map to make different decisions when circumstances change.

At its spring meeting May 6, the Board of Trustees elected six new members and re-elected eight members and its current officers, among other action, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.