Author: Diana Lutz

Political scientist William Lowry has paid close attention to environmental issues for 25 years, marshaling what he learns each year and testing it in front of a class of critical students. He has honed his class “Environmental and Energy Issues” to the point where it is a white-water ride down a river of arguments and counterarguments that puts everything in context and lays out the facts — but skips the lecturing and fearmongering that characterize this debate. There can be no better guide to the perplexed.

Visiting scientist Stephen Blake has traveled the world trying to protect endangered species, including forest elephants and giant tortoises. Lately he and his wife veterinarian Sharon Deem have put increasing emphasis on trying to restore another endangered species: kids who care about nature. They’ve started the St. Louis Box Turtle Project as a kid-friendly way to re-introduce kids to the woods.

A temporary seismic array in Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica recorded two bursts of activity in 2010 and 2011. Careful analysis of the events shows they originate from a subglacial volcano at the leading end of a volcanic mountain chain. The volcano is unlikely to erupt through the kilometer of ice that covers it but it will melt enough ice to change the way the ice in its vicinity flows.

Shrinivas Kulkarni, McArthur Professor of Astronomy & Planetary Science at Caltech, will deliver the sixth annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, in Room 100, Whitaker Hall, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The talk, titled “Booms, Burps & Bumps: the Dynamic Universe,” describes transient astronomical objects, violent, deep sky events typically visible only for a few days. It is free and open to the public.

A small molecule called VIP, known to synchronize time-keeping neurons in the brain’s biological clock, has the startling effect of desynchronizing them at higher dosages, says a research team at Washington University in St. Louis. Neurons knocked for a loop by a burst of VIP are better able to re-synchronize to abrupt shifts in the light-dark cycle like those that make jet lag or shift work so miserable.

Ram Dixit’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that a protein named after the katana, or samurai sword, plays a crucial role in patterning the “skeleton” inside plant cells. The work provides a clue to the long-standing mystery of how the cytoskeletons within both plant and animal cells become organized in function-specific patterns.

Evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton predicted that organisms ought to evolve the ability to discriminate degrees of kinship so as to refine their ability to direct help to individuals with whom they shared the most genes. But two WUSTL biologists point out that there seem to be many cases where “a veil of ignorance” prevents organisms from gaining this kind of information, forcing them to consider a situation from the perspective of all members of their group instead of solely from their own perspective or that of their close kin.

Alan Templeton, PhD, professor emeritus of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, has an unusual screen saver on his office computer. If you ask him about it, he’ll tell you it is a frost flower, or ice flower. The “flowers” are fleeting natural creations that appear only once or twice in the fall and are seen only by those who rise early and know where to look.

Ramanath Cowsik, internationally recognized for his contributions to neutrino physics and to the understanding of dark matter in the universe, was installed as the James S. McDonnell Professor of Space Sciences in Arts & Sciences in a ceremony Oct. 7 in Holmes Lounge.

Members of the Washington University in St. Louis community will gather at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15, in the Ginkgo Room of Olin Library to remember Rita Levi-Montalcini, one of two women from the university who won the Nobel Prize. The event, which is hosted by the Woman’s Club of Washington University, is free and open to the public.