Newsroom Stories

Following a weeklong orientation that focused on health disparities and public health, first-year students at the School of Medicine got their hands dirty working at urban gardens in St. Louis. The students volunteered with a nonprofit organization that works to establish and sustain green spaces in neighborhoods across the city.

Contract employees and other temporary workers will be able to bargain more effectively with the business entity that controls their working conditions and wages after an Aug. 27 decision by the National Labor Relations Board. The ruling signals a shift toward a more realistic and fact-dependant analysis of the evolving nature of employment in the modern labor market, said noted Washington University in St. Louis labor law expert Marion Crain.

Washington University in St. Louis mathematician Blake Thornton, PhD, came in first in the paddleboard division of the MR340, an endurance race on the Missouri River. Before signing up for next year’s race, you might want to read this article as well as watch the video.

Compared with routine medical care, probiotics administered to critically ill patients in intensive care units showed no benefit in preventing the colonization of drug-resistant microbes in the intestinal tract, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement at Washington University in St. Louis has announced the inaugural recipients of its Achievement in Community Engagement Awards. They are Brian D. Carpenter, PhD (right), associate professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis; Leroy D. Nunery II, EdD, educational leader and founder of PlūsUltré LLC; and the United Way of Greater St. Louis.

From the fall of communism to the rise of digital technology, the 1990s were marked by a series of radical transformations. This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will explore some of the era’s most pressing social, political and technological issues with “Rotation 2: Contemporary Art from the Peter Norton Gift.”

Ralph G. Dacey Jr., MD, the Henry G. and Edith R. Schwartz Professor and head of the Department of Neurological Surgery, has received the Walter Reed Distinguished Service Award from his alma mater.

​​Edward F. Lawlor, PhD, dean and the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor at the Brown School at Washington University, has announced his decision to conclude his deanship on June 30, 2016. Lawlor, who has served as dean since 2004, will remain at the university as the Gordon Professor, and a national search for his successor as dean will be conducted, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.

For patients with an often-deadly form of leukemia, new research by Timothy J. Ley, MD, and colleagues suggests that lingering cancer-related mutations – detected after initial treatment with chemotherapy – are associated with an increased risk of relapse and poor survival.

A new study shows that quitting smoking after a heart attack has immediate benefits, including less chest pain, better quality of daily life and improved mental health. Many of these improvements became apparent as little as one month after quitting and are more pronounced after one year, according to the research led by Sharon Cresci, MD, at the School of Medicine.