Author: Diana Lutz

A team of researchers from Washington University and the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa, Israel, has developed a technique to detect the ancestry of disease genes in hybrid, or mixed, human populations.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoMuthanna Al-Dahhan (left) and graduate student Rajneesh Varma are researching effective ways to take agricultural waste and make biofuel out of it.Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis, using an impressive array of imaging and tracking technologies, have determined the importance of mixing in anaerobic digesters for bioenergy production and animal and farm wastes treatment. They are studying ways to take “the smell of money,” as farmers long have termed manure’s odor, and produce biogas from it.

Patterns in the Midwest this spring are eerily reminiscent of 1993 and 1994, back-to-back years of serious flooding. But Midwesterners have not learned “geologic reality,” says Robert E. Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences.

A team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis that includes Alan R. Templeton and the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa has developed a technique to detect the ancestry of disease genes in hybrid, or mixed, human populations. The technique, called expected mutual information (EMI), determines how a set of DNA markers is likely to show the ancestral origin of locations on each chromosome.

Photo by David KilperEngineering students (from left) Alisa Ma, Eriane (E.J.) Adams, Sherrie Fowler (standing), Josh Kuperman and team captain Jonathan Bingham work on the model they built in the WUSTL earthquake engineering lab prior to competing at a seismic design competition in New Orleans.

Photo courtesy of USGSLevees are not infalliable.Midwesterners have to be wondering: Will April be the cruelest month? Patterns in the Midwest this spring are eerily reminiscent of 1993 and 1994, back-to-back years of serious flooding. Parallels this year include abnormally high levels of precipitation in late winter and early spring, early flooding in various regions, and record amounts of snow in states upstream. One thing Midwesterners have not learned is “geologic reality,” says Robert E. Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The School of Engineering Alumni Achievement Awards Dinner will be held April 1, at the Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis. A reception will start at 6:30 p.m., with the dinner following at 7 p.m. Five alumni will receive Alumni Achievement Awards, one will be the recipient of the Young Alumni Award and one will be honored with the Dean’s Award.

Salvatore P. Sutera, Ph.D., senior professor of biomedical engineering, was watching a recent local newscast that featured astronauts greeting the media with their customary grins and salutes when he recognized a former WUSTL student: U.S. Air Force Major and NASA astronaut Robert Behnken, Ph.D.

Photo by David KilperHimadri B. Pakrasi, Ph.D., director of the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) and the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, addresses the crowd at the I-CARES Open House Feb. 29 in Wilson Hall.

Salvatore P. Sutera, Ph.D., senior professor of biomedical engineering, was watching a local newscast that featured astronauts greeting the media with their customary grins and salutes when he recognized a former WUSTL student: U.S. Air Force Major and NASA astronaut Robert Behnken, Ph.D.