WashU Experts

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.

​Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis and a leading national food expert, offers five tips for parents who want a healthy Halloween season. Among them: set portions, avoid demonizing sugar.

Gerhild Scholz Williams explores the vast legal, scientific and theological literature known as demonology, which helped established “the image of the witch as a night-flying, sexually voracious creature.”

Falling back is easier on us than springing forward, says Erik Herzog, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has devoted his career to studying body clocks and circadian rhythms. But it is never a good idea to force our body clocks to follow abrupt changes in mechanical clocks. We should get rid of daylight savings time, Herzog says.

If Republican senators from tobacco-growing southern states believe in social responsibility, they would fully explore the TransPacific (TPP) trade agreement’s potential impact on countries around the world, including provisions that influence the ability of American tobacco corporations to flood the globe with cheap, cancer-causing cigarettes, suggests the author of a book on the history, social costs and global politics of the tobacco industry.

NASA announced earlier this week that dark streaks that appear on Martian slopes in the summer, lengthen and then fade as winter approaches are seeps of salty water. The news that Mars still has surface water again raised hopes that it may have life. It will take thoughtful mission planning to find out, says Washington University in St. Louis Mars expert Ray Arvidson, PhD.

A bipartisan groups of United States senators announced Oct. 1 legislation that would overhaul the country’s criminal justice system, giving judges more leeway in sentencing and reducing sentences for some nonviolent offenders. A move in the right direction, said Carrie Pettus-Davis, PhD, an expert on criminal justice system reform at the Brown School, but the bill doesn’t go far enough.

While party politics have put House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the hot seat in recent months, his hasty resignation from Congress this morning was unexpected, suggests Steven S. Smith, PhD, a nationally recognized expert on congressional politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

While Pope Francis’ whirlwind tour of the United States might seem like a politicized poke-in-the-eye to some conservative American Catholics, his itinerary and social justice talking points closely mirror core Catholic beliefs detailed in church scripture since Matthew wrote his gospel, suggests a historian of Christianity at Washington University in St. Louis.

Pope Francis is widely expected to address a range of issues when he visits the United States Sept. 22-27, including the crisis of mass incarceration in the US criminal justice system. The attention is needed and welcome, said a criminal justice reform expert Carrie Pettus-Davis, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School.