Newsroom Stories

To read the joint letter that WUSTL Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and Timothy M. Wolfe, president of the University of Missouri System, sent last month to the 10 members of Missouri’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Rep. William L. Clay, urging their support in helping close the innovation gap, visit here.

By blending their expertise, two materials science engineers at Washington University in St. Louis changed the electronic properties of new class of materials — just by exposing it to light.

With a one-year grant from Washington University’s International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES), researchers at Washington University in St. Louis plan to use some high-tech methods to better understand the processes, mechanics and interfaces that plants use to move iron from the soil, through water and into the plant.

A panel discussion, titled “Conversations on Gender and Blackness in the Age of Trayvon Martin,” will open WUSTL’s African and African-American Studies fall colloquium series at 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6, in the Women’s Building Formal Lounge. WUSTL faculty will lead the discussion, which includes a coffee reception at 10 a.m.

By passing surgical instruments through a patient’s mouth, School of Medicine doctors have corrected a problem that prevented a woman from easily swallowing food and liquids. The operation is one of the first of its kind in the region performed through a natural opening in the body rather than an incision. Pictured is the surgical knife (blue) in the esophagus.

Washington University media specialist Brian Cohen loved music festivals so much that he created one here in St. Louis. Loufest features indie rock’s top acts including Wilco, the Killers, Alabama Shakes and the National. This year’s event runs Sept. 7-8 in Forest Park.

Researchers have identified the mechanism by which a specific sirtuin protein called Sirt1 (shown in green) operates in the brain to bring about a significant delay in aging and an increase in longevity.

For many firms, losing significant revenue and profit to employee theft has been a cost of doing business. But a new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that information technology monitoring is strikingly effective in reducing theft and fraud, especially in the restaurant industry.

Faculty and graduate students from St. Louis-area universities with an interest in labor, households, health care, law and social welfare are invited to take part in the continuing series of Monday brown-bag luncheon seminars held biweekly on the Danforth Campus beginning Monday, Sept. 9, and running through Dec. 2. All lectures take place at noon in Seigle Hall, Room 348. The series begins with a lecture by Derek Neal, PhD, professor in economics at the University of Chicago titled “Designing Accountability Systems and Incentives Schemes for Educators.”

Rob Reich, PhD, associate professor of political science at Stanford University, has been named the 2013-14 Wells Fargo Advisors Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. An expert on political theory, he will make four visits to WUSTL over the course of the 2013-14 academic year.