Author: Diana Lutz

Liviu Mirica, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the American Chemical Society’s St. Louis Section’s 2016 Saint Louis Award.

What have plant scientists learned in the laboratory in the past three to five years that could be used to reduce inputs of water, chemical fertilizers and herbicides to agricultural fields?

A simple experiment, originally undertaken to test a new methodology, unexpectedly disproved the prevailing notion of cancer metabolism.

The leading theory for the moon’s formation got in trouble recently when it was revealed that the moon and Earth are isotopic twins. Now highly precise measurements of the isotopes of an element that was still condensed at the “cut off” temperature when material started to fall back to Earth suggest a dramatic solution to the problem.

X-Calibur, a novel telescope that sees polarized X-rays rather than visible or infrared light, is preparing to launch from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, N.M. The telescope’s scientific team is led by Henric Krawczynski, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Audrey Odom, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and of molecular microbiology in the School of Medicine, and Timothy Wencewicz, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, both of Washington University in St. Louis, are the recipients of inaugural ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Awards.

Moving beyond the bench, alumna Tina Hesman Saey turned a strong interest in science and a love of language into a new career: science writing.

Botanists have organized to try to stem the frightening loss of plant species across the globe. How well are they doing? They recently met in St. Louis to exchange stories from the botanical front lines.

Autophagy (self eating) has long been considered a kind of indiscriminate Pac Man-like process of waste disposal. Now, scientists at Washington University have shown that apart from conditions of cell starvation, it is carefully regulated: both in plants and yeast — and most likely in people. The finding is relevant to aggregation-prone pathologies such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Washington University geologists are helping to map the extensive cave that underlies a “sinkhole plain” in nearby southern Illinois.