Perspectives

This small icon holds so much, and yet it can also paradoxically mean that there is nothing to see at all. Viewing it this way, an example of semiotic convergence becomes a tiny allegory for digital life writ large: a wilderness of possibilities, with so much just out of reach, writes Christopher Schaberg.

Eric Lenze, MD, the Wallace & Lucille Renard Professor of Psychiatry

Data that documents the magnitude of need won’t fix the scarcity of local assistance, but it can help guide communities in allocating limited resources.

Today’s officials have inherited and inadvertently continue a water system that was meant to exclude more than include, to punish more than teach, to restrict more than provide, writes Kristin Brig-Ortiz.

I’m a chemist, and my research team and I are interested in figuring out how to recycle and repurpose brewery waste into tiny particles that can be used to make new types of prescription drugs, writes Alcina Johnson Sudagar.

If you see a health claim that seems too good – or too bad – to be true, take a moment to mentally run the evidence through these three questions before deciding what to believe, write Amy Eyler and Kimberly Johnson.

For a dose of Halloween fun, Richard Chapman, a senior lecturer in film and media studies in Arts & Sciences, writes about visiting with Francis Ford Coppola during the filming of the 1992 movie “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

WashU Law’s Andrea Katz writes about how the Bill of Rights and decades of Supreme Court decisions inform modern debates over the balance of federal power and state authority.

Jalyn Bonk, a staff nurse at WashU Medicine, brings a personal connection to her work with breast cancer patients. She shares her story in Human Resources’ staff spotlight.

Already, however, the new rule may be having a chilling effect. Despite years of annual growth in the number of foreign-born applicants to U.S. physician training programs, 2025 has seen a nearly 10% drop. If the new H-1B fee is applied to physicians, the number is likely to keep falling, writes Patrick Aguilar.