Author: Talia Ogliore

Researchers led by physicist Henric Krawczynski in Arts & Sciences completed initial construction on XL-Calibur, a new balloon-borne telescope designed to measure the polarization of high-energy X-rays from black holes, neutron stars and other exotic celestial objects.

Scientists in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences will continue to archive and distribute digital data related to the study of the surfaces and interiors of terrestrial planetary bodies under a five-year cooperative agreement with NASA.

Research led by Kun Wang in Arts & Sciences suggests a fundamental reason why Mars has no liquid water on its surface today: it may be just too small.

Biologist Rachel Penczykowski in Arts & Sciences sizes up an unlikely natural phenomenon: when parasitism actually causes the number of hosts to increase, an effect known as a hydra effect. Her study of common water fleas and their fungal parasites includes laboratory components and an analysis of 13 fungal epidemics in nature.

Li Yang, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, leads a team that won a four-year $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to help develop new quantum materials called artificial multiferroics.

Kenneth F. Kelton, the Arthur Holly Compton Professor of Physics in Arts & Sciences, won a five-year grant from NASA to study fundamental fluid processes in the microgravity environment of the International Space Station.

Arpita Bose in Arts & Sciences, whose research is connected to carbon sequestration and sustainable bioproduction, was selected to participate in the Anant Fellowship for Climate Action, a global program for climate change “solutionaries.”

Jeffrey Catalano, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a three-year Department of Energy grant to support research on elements and minerals essential for the production of electric vehicles, cellphones and computers.

Using computer simulations and a simple theoretical model, physicist Mikhail Tikhonov in Arts & Sciences showed how bacteria could adapt to a fluctuating environment by learning its statistical regularities — for example, which nutrients tend to be correlated — and do so faster than evolutionary trial-and-error would normally allow.

St. Louis shows the strongest correlation between biodiversity and income of the 20 major U.S. cities included in a recent study. Solny Adalsteinsson, staff scientist at Tyson Research Center and a lecturer in the environmental studies program in Arts & Sciences, is a co-author of the new research published in Global Change Biology.