This isn’t your old science hall: LSU will cut the ribbon Friday on a $148 million science building that university leaders say closes more than half of the school’s gap in modern teaching and lab space. The Our Lady of the Lake Health Interdisciplinary Science Building spans 148,000 square feet and can hold up to 1,150 students, faculty and researchers at a time, housing programs in biological sciences, chemistry, geology, mathematics, physics and astronomy under one roof. The project drew $43 million in donor support—led by a $15 million commitment from FMOL Health and $10 million from LCMC Health—alongside $105 million in state funding. Friday’s ceremony will also include the announcement of a new seven-figure philanthropic gift to the College of Science, which LSU is billing as the first of its kind for the university.
Big banks cash in: Wall Street’s biggest banks just wrapped up one of their best quarters on record, and surging stock-trading revenue deserves most of the credit, Bloomberg reports. Morgan Stanley headlined the group with $5.15 billion in equity trading revenue—up 25%—and $8.51 billion in total trading revenue. But it wasn’t alone: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup all posted record stock trading results of their own. The common thread was market volatility, which kept trading desks busy even as investment banking results were more of a mixed bag. Bloomberg has the full story.
Recycling redefined: The EPA is weighing a regulatory shift that could be a game changer for the chemical plastic recycling industry, The Associated Press reports. Right now, pyrolysis facilities—which use heat to break plastics down into oils and chemicals—are regulated as incinerators under the Clean Air Act, subject to strict limits on nine air pollutants including toxic particulates, heavy metals and dioxins. The agency is considering reclassifying the process as manufacturing, which would move it under a different section of the law with fewer federal emissions requirements. The American Chemistry Council has spent years pushing for the change, arguing pyrolysis is fundamentally different from incineration because it recovers materials rather than destroying them. Environmental groups counter that the reclassification would gut protections for communities near these facilities—potentially overnight. The Associated Press has the full story.
