In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, more than 50,000 rescue and recovery workers converged at the World Trade Center. Among them were the 62 members of Missouri’s FEMA Urban Search and Rescue task force. The experience at ground zero made many workers sick, with health problems ranging from asthma to post-traumatic stress disorder. St. Louis Public Radio’s Véronique LaCapra has this report about how the members of Missouri’s rescue team are doing.

Researchers at Washington University have invented an imaging system that can take a hundred billion pictures in a second -- fast enough to record the fastest phenomena in the universe. The technology could be used to image everything from chemical reactions inside human cells to supernovas in space -- and help take optical cloaking (a la Star Trek) from science fiction to reality.

It spanned less than three blocks and lasted only about ten years. But the St. Louis arts and entertainment district known as Gaslight Square flourished in the 1950s and '60s, making the city a national destination for music and culture. In this music-rich, non-narrated feature, twelve St. Louisans -- most in their 70s and 80s -- share personal memories of Gaslight Square. All but one of the people I interviewed for this story frequented or performed in the district in its heyday. As uploaded, the feature is 6:15 long with a 30 second music tail. For web producers: Along with audio, I produced two slideshows. One is comprised of historical photos of Gaslight Square. The other includes now-and-then photos of each person in the story, along with a description of their personal connection to the district. Please contact me if you would be interested in the slideshows, or individual photos.

By the early 20th century, trumpeter swans had almost disappeared from the lower 48 states. But re-population efforts have helped these majestic birds recover. They now number in the tens of thousands. Every winter, hundreds of trumpeter swans migrate from their breeding grounds in Wisconsin to the Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary, about 20 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri. There more than 900 there this year – a record number. On a recent cold, blustery morning, St. Louis Public Radio and the Beacon’s Véronique LaCapra drove up to see -- and hear -- the swans…and produced this audio postcard.

They're flat, they're slimy, and they hide under rocks on river bottoms. At up to 2 feet in length, the Ozark hellbender is one of the world's largest salamanders. And they're disappearing. There are fewer than 600 left in the rivers of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Scientists have been making a huge effort to get them to breed in captivity. Now, as St. Louis Public Radio's Veronique LaCapra reports, it looks like 2012 could be the year of new hope for hellbenders.

It has been just over three months since the federal spending cuts known as sequestration first took effect. A handful of programs were spared — but not scientific research, which amounts to about $140 billion in annual government spending. As St. Louis Public Radio’s Véronique LaCapra found out, at universities here in St. Louis, some scientists are worried about what the budget cuts will mean for their research — and for their students.

Camels are known for their ability to travel long distances across the desert without water. But they’re also becoming an increasingly important source of milk for people in drought-prone regions. That includes East African countries like Kenya, where camel numbers have skyrocketed over the past few decades. But introducing camels — or any species — to a new region, may mean bringing in new diseases that could affect livestock, people, and wildlife. The Saint Louis Zoo has been studying camel diseases in Kenya to help assess their risks.

For more than a decade, Washington University anthropologist Crickette Sanz and Lincoln Park Zoo research conservationist David Morgan have lived and worked in a remote stretch of forest in Africa’s Congo Basin, studying chimpanzees and gorillas. Together with local Congolese, they founded the Goualougo Triangle Ape Project, whose mission is to study and protect great apes and their habitat. They spoke with St. Louis Public Radio's Véronique LaCapra.

A conversation with Washington University law professor Rebecca Dresser, about an article she recently published in the journal Science about the ethics of human testing, and changes she'd like to see made to the federal regulation designed to protect human research subjects. In addition to the Q&A for broadcast, there are two audio excerpts that can be used as "web extras." For an example, see here: http://www.news.stlpublicradio.org/post/opinion-exploring-ethics-human-testing

Plants don't have ears, right? And if they can't hear you would assume that noise wouldn't matter much to them, which is why researchers haven't given much thought to the idea that noise might affect plants. But thanks to some new research, all of that may be about to change.

St. Louis is one of hundreds of older cities across the country facing the challenge of dealing with an aging sewer system. This summer, the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District settled a four-year lawsuit with the Environmental Protection Agency over violations of the Clean Water Act. Under the terms of the consent decree, MSD will spend the next 23 years upgrading the St. Louis area sewer system. St. Louis Public Radio’s Véronique LaCapra looks at the problems with our sewers – and what it’s going to take to fix them.