Science & Technology

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.’

Researchers in the lab of Daniel Giammar, in McKelvey School of Engineering have devised a simple, quick and inexpensive way to quantify how much lead is trapped by a water filter.

The Office of Sustainability has updated its virtual tour of campus sustainability features to include the various buildings and elements of the recently completed east end project. 

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.

Rohit Pappu, a professor in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is part of a multi-institutional team awarded a $7.5 million MURI grant to study and engineer membraneless organelles.

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.

Fangqiong Ling, assistant professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has been recognized by the International Water Association and the International Society for Microbial Ecology.

Lan Yang, the Edwin H. & Florence G. Skinner Professor of Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has been elected a 2020 Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Four and a half feet — as long as debaters are at least this far apart, with airflow directed back at them, the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 is minimal to none, say researchers at Washington University in St. Louis.