Behold the humble water flea, locked in a battle of mythological proportions
Biologist Rachel Penczykowski in Arts & Sciences sizes up an unlikely natural phenomenon: when parasitism actually causes the number of hosts to increase, an effect known as a hydra effect. Her study of common water fleas and their fungal parasites includes laboratory components and an analysis of 13 fungal epidemics.
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Perspectives
A look at WashU’s top employer ranking
Amanda Pope, director of HR communications and employee engagement at WashU, discusses the university’s being recognized as Missouri’s top employer by Forbes, sharing initiatives offered to support employees throughout the pandemic.
Jurors don’t know what the penalties for a guilty verdict will be. They should.
If juries knew the consequences of their decisions, they’d deliberate more carefully — and could serve as a check on punitive laws, writes the School of Law’s Dan Epps.
The ‘Whereas Hoops’ project
Noah Cohan in Arts & Sciences and John Early at the Sam Fox School are leading efforts to bring basketball hoops to Forest Park. Cohan writes about their project and the history of why basketball is conspicuously absent in a park with sporting facilities aplenty.
Videos
Seeing exponential growth for what it is
Jeffrey M. Zacks, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, and of radiology at the School of Medicine, explains why we have such a difficult time with exponential growth and how to make its presentation easier to understand.
Bookshelf
What we don’t understand about poverty in America
“Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty,” a new book by Mark Rank, a leading academic expert on poverty at Washington University in St. Louis, explores the idealized image of American society.