Author: Talia Ogliore

Geoscientist Rita Parai in Arts & Sciences uses noble gas isotopes to better understand the formation and evolution of planetary bodies. Her new modeling study published in PNAS shows that the deep mantle had low concentrations of volatiles like xenon and water when it formed, setting up an internal viscosity contrast with lasting impacts.

Jacob Schaefer III, the Charles Allen Thomas Emeritus Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died June 27, 2022 in St. Louis. Schaefer was one of the world’s experts in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). He was 83 years old.

Camelina, an oilseed plant grown in modern-day Ukraine, may have been a more important and widespread crop than previously thought, according to collaborators from anthropology and biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. Their findings could inform breeding programs to improve this crop for biofuels applications.

New approaches to help save animals from extinction may come from experts outside of the traditional natural science disciplines. The Living Earth Collaborative invites social scientists, political scientists, engineers and other experts from the university community who would like to be involved in efforts to help with conservation projects to participate in a July 21 social event.

A team that received early support from the Living Earth Collaborative was awarded a $633,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to evaluate pollination in orchards across the city of St. Louis. They will examine how factors such as human population density, socioeconomic status, soil type and surrounding vegetation impact insect numbers and fruit yield.

Living Earth Collaborative postdoctoral fellow Matthew Austin published new research finding that climate change is affecting how violets reproduce.

Geoscientists Walid Ben Mansour and Douglas A. Wiens in Arts & Sciences received a grant from the National Science Foundation to determine the thermal and compositional structure of Antarctica using seismic, gravity and topography data and petrological modeling.

Researchers working with Jonathan Barnes, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, published new research showing how molecules with interlocking ring architectures can be functionalized and incorporated into three-dimensional polymer networks and materials.

Sachiko Amari, research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is part of the international team that described results from the first sample-return mission to a carbonaceous asteroid, the JAXA Hayabusa2 mission to asteroid Ryugu. The study was published June 9 in Science.

Arts & Sciences biologists from the lab of Jonathan Myers determined that tree beta diversity — a measure of site-to-site variation in the composition of species present within a given area — matters more for the ecosystem than other components of biodiversity at larger scales.