Newsroom Stories

Talk about climbing the walls. In Leo, the gravity-defying new show from Berlin’s Circle of Eleven, the acrobatic star, Tobias Wegner, is trapped in a room seemingly absent the laws of physics. Leo is one of two striking works of physical theatre set to launch Washington University in St. Louis’ 2012-13 Edison Ovations Series this fall. In all, the season will feature 14 events by nationally and internationally known dance, theatre and musical artists.

Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has named Peter MacKeith its Honorary Consul for Missouri, in St. Louis. MacKeith, associate dean and associate professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has long worked to deepen cultural and educational relations between Finland and the United States, particularly in the fields of architecture, education and design. Finnish Ambassador Ritva Jolkkonen inaugurated McKeith during a visit to campus June 21 and 22.

Washington University in St. Louis, Teamsters Joint Council 13 and St. Louis Green partnered to help used artificial turf from WUSTL’s Francis Field find a new life on the floors of playgrounds, parks and more throughout the region. The efforts are keeping about 1 million pounds of waste from landfills.

Architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have built dozens of outdoor benches for Patrick Henry Academy in downtown St. Louis. Constructed of cedar, oak and walnut, the benches are simply designed yet boast a telling detail: Legs attach to seat via “wedged through tenons,” a complicated form of joinery long associated with fine furniture-making. The benches are one facet of an award-winning, two-semester studio designed to help the historic elementary reinvent itself as a green school.

How strong are the links in food webs? An experiment at Washington University in St. Louis demonstrates that they’re strong enough for a disturbance  to propagate across four trophic levels and two ecosystems. The experiment demonstrates that invasive species such as purple loosestrife could have broad effects on surrounding plant and animal communities, many of them cryptic.

WHAT: In an environmentally friendly and community initiative, Washington University in St. Louis and Teamsters Joint Council 13 will load about 1 million pounds of large rolls of artificial turf from WUSTL’s Francis Field into trucks to be distributed and reused throughout the region in playgrounds, parks and more, instead of ending up in a […]

A new assay that uses mitochondrial DNA that mutates faster than nuclear DNA has allowed scientists at Washington University in St. Louis to identify one of the major animal reservoirs for the ehlichioses, STARI and other tick-borne diseases in the southeastern United States. The animal turned out to be the eastern gray squirrel.

A protein required to regrow injured peripheral nerves has been identified by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The finding, in mice, has implications for improving recovery after nerve injury in the extremities. It also opens new avenues of investigation toward triggering nerve regeneration in the central nervous system, notorious for its inability to heal.

Researchers studying the genetic roots of the most common malignant childhood brain tumor have discovered missteps in three of the four subtypes of the cancer involving genes that are already being targeted for drug development.

Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Mark W. Smith, JD, assistant vice chancellor and director of the Career Center at Washington University of St. Louis, to serve on the Midwestern Higher Education Commission (MHEC). The commission advances higher education through interstate cooperation and resource sharing.