Heavy metals control the ‘breath’ of wetlands
At the river’s edge, where water and soil meet, microbes churn out methane and other greenhouse gasses. Jeffrey G. Catalano, of Arts & Sciences, wades into local Missouri wetlands to determine the role of heavy metals in this process.
Time travel with bat guano
A favorite Halloween symbol leaves behind clues to what a tropical landscape looked like thousands of years ago. With support from the Living Earth Collaborative, postdoctoral scholar Rachel Reid of Arts & Sciences digs in.
Metabolomics for the masses
Gary Patti, the Michael and Tana Powell Professor of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded $4.8 million in two separate National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants focused on improving the accessibility of metabolomics — the study of the biochemical reactions that underlie metabolism.
Statistically sound
A National Science Foundation-funded workshop recently brought more than 75 statistics researchers to the Danforth Campus. Organized by Todd Kuffner of Arts & Sciences, this is the third year the event has been hosted at the university, and the first since math changed its name this summer to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
Engines through the ages: Nobel laureate to deliver Weissman Lecture
2016 Nobel laureate Fraser Stoddart will deliver the Weissman Lecture Oct. 4 at Washington University in St. Louis. The lecture journeys into mechanical innovations realized during the early and mid-20th century and a new type of bonding in molecules consisting of mechanical linkages. It is free and open to the public.
Sniffing out error in detection dog data
New research by Karen DeMatteo, a biologist in Arts & Sciences, finds three alternative explanations beyond errors in handler or dog training that can explain why dogs trained to identify scat for conservation purposes sometimes collect non-target scats.
Noodling around
Steven Frankel, assistant professor of mathematics in Arts & Sciences, talks about why there are no obvious questions in math — and the link between the geometry of a space and how that space changes over time.
Field Notes | Azores, Portugal
Students in an undergraduate class in Arts & Sciences traveled to the remote Portuguese Azores archipelago to study field geology techniques in a rugged landscape shaped by volcanoes and shifting tectonic plates.
National award honors chemistry department’s safety innovation
The Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences recently received an Innovation Award from the Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association and Association of Public and Land-grant Universities in recognition of its outstanding program that improves research safety on campus.
Improving nuclear detection with new chip power
A cross-disciplinary team of chemists and physicists in Arts & Sciences is building a better computer chip to improve detection and surveillance for the illegal transport of nuclear materials at U.S. borders. The work is part of a new, five-year, $10 million collaboration in low-energy nuclear science led by Texas A&M University.
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