Newsroom Stories

The annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition kicks off at 4 p.m. today in Simon Hall. This year’s case will revolve around vacant land use in St. Louis. Open to all Washington University graduate and undergraduate students, the OSCC provides participants with a chance to learn about practical, real-world applications of corporate responsibility and sustainability concepts so that they can make an impact in the world around them.

The No. 4 WUSTL women’s soccer team will host 2012 NCAA Division III First and Second Round action Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 10-11, at Francis Field.

Despite evidence supporting boardroom diversity as a driver of corporate performance, “the percentage of women directors on U.S. boards stagnated some years ago and remains at or near 12 percent, with fewer than 10 percent of boards having three or more women,” says Hillary A. Sale, JD, the Walter D. Coles professor of law at Washington University School of Law. “The pressure to add women directors is, however, growing.”  Sale discusses options to grow board diversity.

Sunscreen contains nanoparticles to protect our skin by reflecting hazardous ultraviolet radiation from the sun. But what happens to those nanoparticles when you wash the sunscreen away? Young-Shin Jun, PhD, has received a three-year, $382,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to determine the physical and chemical evolution of environmental and engineered nanoparticles in natural and engineered aquatic systems, such as wastewater treatment plants.

Some students enrolled in the Cognitive, Computational and Systems Neuroscience (CCSN) pathway, are sharing their love of science and improving communication skills through community outreach. CCSN is a specialization for graduate students in psychology, neuroscience and biomedical engineering. The students are coaching low-income area teens for an international competition called the Brain Bee, and participating in many events, including the Nov. 10 Amazing Brain Carnival held at the St. Louis Science Center. The free event introduces the public to brain science research in St. Louis. 

Maria Zuber, a professor of geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will deliver the fifth annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, in Room 100 in Whitaker Hall on the Danforth Campus. During the free, public lectures, she will discuss new information about water on the moon.

Investigators at Washington University and The Scripps Research Institute have announced the launch of a “Global Metabolomic Initiative” to facilitate meta-analyses on studies of the metabolism of bacteria, yeast, plants, animals and people. Although metabolomics has existed as a discipline for only a decade, it has already provided insights into many difficult-to-treat diseases, including chronic pain. Many more are expected to fall out of the meta-analyses.

A group of Washington University students, in collaboration with the Missouri History Museum and Gephardt Institute of Public Service, will present a two-part community forum on the evolution of the U.S. prison-industrial complex titled “The Criminal Brand: America’s Invisible Class,” at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 8 at the Missouri History Museum.

In the United States, packaging makes up one third of municipal solid waste. But rather than merely recycling such materials, a recent student-led project — involving the School of Medicine, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the Environmental Health & Saftey area — is working to transform them into art.

In 1827, a young giraffe named Zarafa was shipped from the Sudan to Paris, where her arrival caused an immediate sensation. That true history forms the basis of Zarafa, an animated French film that combines Zarafa’s story with that of Maki, a 10-year-old escaped slave. This weekend, the Center for the Humanities and the Program in Film & Media Studies will screen Zarafa as part of their Ninth Annual Children’s Film Showcase.