About

Beth Miller is a writer and editor in St. Louis, Missouri. She has worked for weekly and daily newspapers and has been a writer and editor at Washington University in St. Louis
since 2006. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers; is a longtime runner, cyclist, triathlete, and duathlete; and enjoys training her Golden Retriever, Mack.

The Most Painful Choice – McFarland

When Champ, a German Shepherd, was adopted from a local breed rescue, his family hoped and expected to spend many fun-filled years with him. However, Champ suffered physically and mentally from neglect and trauma from his first years of life. Despite numerous treatments, Champ was never able to overcome that trauma to become a “normal” dog, and his family made the painful decision to give him peace through behavior euthanasia.

This work serves not only as an account of Champ’s life and his fam

Novel process extracts rare earth elements from waste

Rare earth elements (REE), a group of 17 metallic elements, are in nearly every piece of technology, including cell phones, televisions, computers and almost every part of a vehicle. The demand for these elements increases annually, however the supply is limited geopolitically and is mined with environmentally unsustainable practices.

Young-Shin Jun, professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and her tea

Improving women’s health with engineering

For decades, women’s health has been an afterthought. As recent as 1993, most testing in clinical trials was conducted on men, and female animals and cells were not required to be included in federally funded testing until 2016. This lack of research focused solely on women’s issues has trickle-down effects on women of all ages, from puberty through post-menopause. Maternal mortality rates are increasing in the U.S., particularly in Black and Native American women, who are three times more likel

Howard-Evans Place: How an African-American, middle-class “Garden of Eden” became a target for redevelopment.

In the early 1990s, the southeast quadrant of the Highway 40/Eager Road and Brentwood Boulevard intersection looked considerably different than it does today. The twenty-two-acre piece of land was home to dozens of middle-class African-American families, including some who had lived in the neighborhood for generations. The homes were not large, but they were neat, generally well-kept, and reflected pride in ownership. By 1997, those homes and the lives spent in them were a only a memory, replace