About The Source
The Source is a place for information, inspiration and for sharing stories about exciting discoveries and accomplishments at Washington University. Here, you’ll experience the research, scholarship and creativity that drive us every day. You’ll also get a glimpse of campus life and meet the people who inspire us: scientists, leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, artists and authors. If you’re looking to explore a remarkable place where people matter and serious work is done, this is The Source.
Are there Zika reservoirs in the Americas?
A researcher at Washington University in St. Louis travels the Americas, collecting feces from nonhuman primates to determine the risk of Zika reservoirs.
Cooking for civil rights
“Few chefs of African descent work at the pinnacle of our national haute cuisine today, yet their contributions to American kitchens and dining rooms have been definitive.” So argues Rafia Zafar, professor of English and of African-American studies, both in Arts & Sciences, in her new book “Recipes for Respect: African American Meals and Meaning.”
How team sports change a child’s brain
Adult depression has long been associated with shrinkage of the hippocampus, a brain region that plays an important role in memory and response to stress. Now, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has linked participation in team sports to larger hippocampal volumes in children and less depression in boys ages 9 to 11.
Women shaped cuisine, culture of ancient Cahokia
Long before corn was king, the women of Cahokia’s mysterious Mississippian mound-building culture were using their knowledge of domesticated and wild food crops to feed the thousands of Native Americans who flocked to what was then North America’s largest city, suggests a new book by a paleoethnobiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “Feeding Cahokia” sets the record straight on America’s first farmers while offering a roadmap for rediscovering the highly nutritious native foods they once cultivated, including a North American cousin of quinoa.
Topical immunotherapy keeps skin cancer risk at bay
A combination of two topical creams lowers the risk that patients will develop squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, according to new research at the School of Medicine. The combination already has been shown to clear precancerous skin lesions from sun-damaged skin.
Performance-based pay linked to employee mental-health problems, study shows
In the first big-data study combining objective medical and compensation records with demographics, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Aarhus University in Denmark discovered once a company switches to a pay-for-performance process, the number of employees using anxiety and depression medication increased by 5.7 percent over an existing base rate of 5.2 percent.
Engineering treatments for the opioid epidemic
A biomedical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis is developing a therapeutic option that would prevent opiates from crossing the blood-brain barrier, preventing the high abusers seek.
Mobile phone technology to screen, help treat college students
With a growing demand for mental health services at colleges, a research team led by the School of Medicine has received a $3.8 million grant to test a mental health phone app to treat depression, anxiety and eating disorders in a study involving some 8,000 students at 20 colleges, universities and community colleges.