Author: Diana Lutz

The cyanobacteria are famous for releasing the oxygen that made the Earth a hospitable planet, but some strains also have a hidden talent for producing hydrogen gas, a potential biofuel. With the help of a few metabolic tricks, a lab at Washington University has coaxed one such strain to produce champion levels of the gas.

A team of scientists a team, including William B. McKinnon, PhD, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, propose an explanation for the bizarre ridge belting Saturn’s outermost moon Iapetus. At one time Iapetus itself may have had a satellite, created by a giant impact with another body. The satellite’s orbit would have decayed because of tidal interactions with Iapetus, and at some point it would have been ripped apart, forming a ring of debris around Iapetus that would eventually slam into the moon near its equator,

Washington University is starting a Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) program. The NUE program, which will take applicants in the fall of 2011, has two components. The first is a new minor in nanotechnology open to any undergraduate pursuing a major in engineering, biology, physics or chemistry. The second is a summer fellowship open to undergraduates to develop nanotechnology teaching modules for K-12 students.

Who: BattleBots (remotely controlled “armed” and armored machines built by engineering students at Washington University in St. Louis). What: The fall 2010 BattleBots Battle Royale, sponsored by the campus chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Two three-pound robots will try to pulverize one another in three-minute matches. The last robot still functioning […]

Competing against 130 teams from across the world, a team of six undergraduates from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis took silver in the foundational advance category of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition this year. The  WUSTL team built a genetic sequence that once inserted in a yeast cell would signal whether the cell was growing with or without the sugar galactose by fluorescing either yellow or cyan.

Novel metal catalysts might be able to turn greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide into liquid fuels without producing more carbon waste in the process.

The Advanced Coal and Energy Research Facility, an experimental combustion facility on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis, was dedicated in October 2010. At the time, the combuster was cold and the bioreactors empty. Now that the facility is up and running, Richard Axelbaum, PhD, professor of energy, environmental & chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science and director of the new facility, gives a video tour of the new laboratory.  

On Nov. 18, Paul C. Paris, PhD, professor emeritus of mechanics in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Paris West, one of many awards to cap his career in fracture mechanics.

Washington University in St. Louis has received a $1 million grant over the next four years from the Amgen Foundation to provide hands-on laboratory experience to approximately 100 undergraduates through the Amgen Scholars Program.

In her research, Jennifer R. Smith, PhD, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences and of environmental studies, both in Arts & Sciences, uses the tools of classic earth science to address questions of archeological interest.