Newsroom Stories

​It’s another far-reaching global sporting scandal as the World Anti-Doping Agency recommends the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) suspend Russia from athletics competition. Washington University’s Olin Business of Sports Program Director Patrick Rishe says the decision could have fallout of Olympic proportion.

Harold Pollack, PhD, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, will talk about socio-economic and school-based approaches and strategies for reducing gun violence and why they have or have not worked, during a keynote at 2 p.m. Nov. 12 in the Clark-Fox Forum at the Brown School’s Hillman Hall on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

​A team of engineers, led by Washington University’s Lihong Wang and postdoctoral researcher Junjie Yao, found that by genetically modifying glioblastoma cancer cells to express BphP1 protein, derived from a bacterium commonly found in soil and water, they could clearly see tiny amounts of live cancer cells as deep as 1 centimeter in tissue using photoacoustic tomography.

The documentary film, “A Spark of Nerve,” which debuts at 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, at the 24th annual St. Louis International Film Festival, details Susan E. Mackinnon’s decades-long tenacity in pioneering the nerve-transfer procedure and the lives transformed by it.

Nancy Staudt, JD, PhD, dean of the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, has been installed as the inaugural Howard and Caroline Cayne Professor of Law. A lecture and reception to celebrate the occasion were held Oct. 22 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall.

The United States Supreme Court agreed Nov. 6, for the fourth time in three years, to rule on challenges to the Affordable Care Act. This time the court will rule on the birth control mandate. A decision siding with large nonprofit corporations in this new case means that employers would prevail at significant cost to employees, said Elizabeth Sepper, JD, religious freedom and health law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University in St. Louis has been recognized as a bronze level Bicycle Friendly University by the League of American Bicyclists.

In 1972, Washington University launched one of the nation’s first academic programs in women’s studies. This fall, Arts & Sciences celebrates a new milestone as Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies becomes a full department.

Salmon and other freshwater fish and amphibians supercharge their ability to see red and infrared light. Scientists at the School of Medicine have shown that this evolutionary adaptation hinges on the activity of an enzyme that converts vitamin A1 to vitamin A2, enabling the aquatic creatures to more easily navigate murky waters.

More than half of black youth report that they or someone they know was harassed by or experienced violence from the police, compared with one third of white youth and one quarter of Latino youth, according to a new report on black millennials co-authored by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Chicago.