Science & Technology

A balloon-borne scientific instrument designed to study the origin of cosmic rays is taking its second turn high above the continent of Antarctica three and a half weeks after its launch.

Washington University’s Jerome Cox and Jack H. Ladenson join a small but distinguished group of fellows of the National Academy of Inventors, the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have solved a mystery: How did arsenic show up in aquifer water that had been triple purified? Dissolved organic compounds.

Alumnus and tech giant David Karandish, BSCS ‘05, knows what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Chemists in Arts & Sciences have re-engineered one of nature’s solar cells to drive electrons down an alternate path. This work advances the understanding of the earliest light-driven events of photosynthesis and is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Patricia Weisensee, a mechanical engineer in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, combined properties similar to those seen in a lotus leaf with those found on rose petals to find a more efficient way for droplets to evaporate from a surface.

New Arts & Sciences research finds that chimpanzees that use a multi-step process and complex tools to gather termites are more likely to share tools with novices. The study helps illuminate chimpanzees’ capacity for prosocial — or helping — behavior, a quality that has been recognized for its potential role in the evolution of human cultural abilities.

For thousands of years, goosefoot and knotweed were grown as crops, possibly feeding as many indigenous people of North America as corn. But the domesticated forms of these lost crops became lost over the years, and now a Washington University in St. Louis archaeologist is trying to figure out why — and recreate them.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences discovered that rice domestication relied on selection for traits determined by a poorly understood portion of the rice genome.

Winter is dark. It’s exhausting. It also features the flu, colds and a tendency to stay indoors. So is Jan. 1 really a good time for resolutions? WashU’s Tim Bono has a better idea: Wait a few months.