Author: Diana Lutz

This year’s Mathematics Department’s William H. Roever Lectures will be a two- day event, October 19-20 in 201 Lopata Hall on the Danforth Campus. There will be four lectures on the recent solution of the very famous Poincare’ Conjecture. John Morgan, Ph.D., professor of mathematics at Columbia University, and Gang Tian, Ph.D., professor of mathematics at Princeton University will give these lectures. Their book, “Ricci Flow and the Poincare Conjecture, “has just appeared. It gives a detailed exposition of the solution posted as manuscripts on the Web server arXiv in 2002 and 2003 by the Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman.

Image courtesy of the BBCWhat good is longevity if you end up looking like this? WUSTL biologist Stan Braude, working on a book about the critters, says the naked mole rat is being studied for its tendency to live a long life.Who would have thought that the secrets to long life might exist in the naked, wrinkled body of one of the world’s ugliest animals? Probably not many, but current research may be leading seekers of the Fountain of Youth to a strange little beast — the naked mole rat.

Photo by David KilperJonathan M. Chase, Ph.D., associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has been named director of the Tyson Research Center. Above, he and Ruth Poland, a senior in the Environmental Studies Program in Arts & Sciences, examine a spotted salamander larvae in one of the Tyson Research Center ponds. Chase is only the third permanent director to oversee research and activities at the 2,000-acre field site since 1970.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoOlsen is studying the genetics of two types of clover to determine why one type is cyanogenic (toxic) and the other is not.That clover necklace you make for your child could well be a ring of poison. That’s because some clovers have evolved genes that help the plant produce cyanide — to protect itself against little herbivores, such as snails, slugs and voles, that eat clover. Other clover plants that do not make cyanide are found in climates with colder temperatures. So, in picking your poison, er, clover, ecology and geography play important roles. A plant evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis is trying to get to the bottom of this botanical cloak and dagger tale.

David Kilper/WUSTL Photo(L-R) Larry Taber, postdoctoral researcher Gang Xu and Philip Bayly examine brain and heart cells to learn something of the mechanics involved in brain folding.Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are finding common ground between the shaping of the brain and the heart during embryonic development. Larry A.Taber, Ph.D., the Dennis and Barbara Kessler Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Phillip Bayly, Ph.D., Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering, are examining mechanical and developmental processes that occur in the folding of the brain’s surface, or cortex, which gives the higher mammalian brain more surface area (and hence more intellectual capacity) than a brain of comparable volume with a smooth surface.

The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences have signed a research agreement that will involve collaboration on a number of research thrusts, travel between the two institutions, and eventually student exchanges that could lead to some Chinese students attaining doctorates from Washington University.

Ruth DeFries, Ph.D., a 1976 summa cum laude graduate of Washington University in St. Louis’ earth and planetary sciences department in Arts & Sciences, has been named a MacArthur Fellow and will receive $500,000 from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoRaymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor, and chair of earth and planetary sciences (left), and Dong Shuwen, Ph.D., vice president of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, sign an agreement between Arvdison’s department and the Academy.The Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CAGS) have signed a research agreement that will involve collaboration on a number of research thrusts, travel between the two institutions, and eventually student exchanges that could lead to some Chinese students attaining doctorates from Washington University in St. Louis. The agreement was signed Sept. 18 at a ceremony and reception held on the third floor of the Earth and Planetary Sciences building.

Photo by David KilperHimadri B. Pakrasi, Ph.D., has an impressive title, one that speaks volumes about who he is, what he has done and what he is doing. Pakrasi, the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, and professor of energy in the School of Engineering, has a title that transcends what have been boundaries at Washington University.

Sexton observes a flooded Marais Temps Clair.In science, it’s best to be good, but sometimes it’s better to be lucky. Ecologist Owen Sexton, professor emeritus of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, had just completed a census of snakes at a conservation preserve northwest of St. Louis, when the great flood of 1993 deluged the area, putting the preserve at least 15 feet under water. The flood provided Sexton with a rare opportunity: his collected data and the flood would combine to make “the perfect study” of how an area rebounds from natural disaster.