Author: Talia Ogliore

William M. Boothby, professor emeritus of mathematics in Arts & Sciences, died Feb. 14 in Nashville, Tenn. He was 102.

Some plants like ginkgo trees have either male or female flowers, not both. Susanne Renner, honorary professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, reviewed the genetic basis of sex determination in plants for Nature Plants and will guest-edit a special issue of a Royal Society journal on the topic.

Sometimes overshadowed by neighboring Amazon forests, the forests of the Andes Mountains are helping to protect the planet by acting as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide and keeping some of this climate-altering gas out of circulation, according to biologists in Arts & Sciences and their partners from a Living Earth Collaborative working group.

Michael Nowak, research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is co-author of a study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that shares unprecedented observations of the black hole in the galaxy M87.

John E. McCarthy, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Mathematics and chair of mathematics and statistics in Arts & Sciences, received a five-year $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop new tools to deal with complexity in the design of systems such as those used in automatic pilots and self-driving cars.

Ecologist James Stroud in Arts & Sciences studies how patterns of contemporary natural selection can shape the structure of entire communities. He won the American Society of Naturalists’ 2021 Young Investigator Award, one of the most prestigious for young researchers in the field of ecology and evolution.

Arts & Sciences archaeologists excavated around earthen mounds and analyzed sediment cores to test a persistent theory about the collapse of Cahokia, the pre-Columbian Native American city once home to more than 15,000 people.

The fluorine isotope is the fifth new isotope that Robert J. Charity, research professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, and Lee G. Sobotka, professor of chemistry and of physics, have discovered together. They reported their observations in the journal Physical Review Letters.

To figure out how to best support two endangered species — black-and-white ruffed lemurs and diademed sifakas — scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are joining up with researchers at the Saint Louis Zoo, Missouri Botanical Garden and Madagascar-based collaborators for an innovative research effort under the Living Earth Collaborative.

Tidestrom’s lupine is a delicate flowering plant that is part of a dune ecosystem along the west coast of the United States. Biologist Eleanor Pardini in Arts & Sciences has tracked Tidestrom’s lupine at the Point Reyes National Seashore in central California for more than 14 years.