Author: Talia Ogliore

Cereal grains — including wheat, rice, barley and millet — are the most important food sources in the world today. Focusing on the ancient history of staple cereals in China, archaeologist Xinyi Liu in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis shows how the timing of the translocation of novel food crops reflects a range of choices that communities made — sometimes driven by ecological pressure and sometimes by social conditions or ‘culinary conservatism.’

Li Yang, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, conducted research with black phosphorus — a material with a thickness of just a few atomic layers — in a study that is hailed as a milestone of the past 50 years by the Physical Review B, an academic journal of the American Physical Society.

Scaled survivors of the coldest night in south Florida’s recent history all converged on the same new, lower limit of thermal tolerance, regardless of their species’ previous ability to withstand cold. Biologist James Stroud in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis led the team that reported the findings in the journal Biology Letters.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis shows that honey bees rely on chemical cues related to their shared gut microbial communities, instead of genetic relatedness, to identify members of their colony.

Climate change is affecting the spread and severity of infectious diseases around the world — and infectious diseases may in turn be contributing to climate change, according to new research from Washington University’s Living Earth Collaborative working group led by biologist Amanda Koltz in Arts & Sciences.

Michael Wysession, professor in earth and planetary sciences, and Bryn Lutes, a lecturer in chemistry, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, believe that high school students will learn chemistry better when they crunch actual climate data, rather than memorize the periodic table by rote. They helped write a national chemistry curriculum that is loaded with real-world examples — like ocean acidification — and is already being rolled out by school districts in Los Angeles and other parts of California.

Keith Hengen, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received a three-year $1.8 million grant to study the role of sleep and waking behavior in shaping the brain’s neural dynamics. His research will help scientists understand how sleep contributes to healthy cognition and shed light on the mechanisms by which disrupted sleep worsens neurodegenerative and mental health disorders.

Kirsten Gilbert Alberts and Emma Johnson at the School of Medicine and Keith Hengen in Arts & Sciences each received $70,000 Young Investigator grants from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, an organization that is committed to alleviating the suffering caused by mental illness by supporting research that will lead to advances and breakthroughs in scientific research.

Deprived of light, plants are unable to transform carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into sugar molecules. New research led by biologist Richard Vierstra in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis provides an in-depth look at how maize responds at a cellular level.

In recognition of excellence across multiple fields, rising junior Prathamesh Chati in Arts & Sciences has been named the 2020 Florence Moog Scholar.