Science & Technology

A review published in the Nov. 9 issue of Science explores the complexity of evolution’s predictability in extraordinary detail. Jonathan Losos of Arts & Sciences takes on a classic question posed by Stephen Jay Gould in an effort to fully interrogate ideas about contingency’s role in evolution.

David Charbonneau, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, will deliver the annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 15, in Whitaker Hall, Room 100, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The talk, titled “How to Find an Inhabited Exoplanet,” is free and open to the public.

Emotions such as anger, fear, disgust and disillusionment can have dramatically different effects on voter apathy and turnout, said Alan Lambert, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis take a closer look at lithium metal plating and make some surprising findings that might lead to the next generation of batteries.

Storms help form an important chemical that is highly significant in the search for life on Mars. A team led by Alian Wang of Arts & Sciences created a simulation in the lab that sheds new light on what’s being kicked up by those massive Martian dust devils.

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.

Three organizations on two continents are working to figure out if one subspecies of colobus monkey is actually two. The answer could help endangered monkeys and clarify questions about zoo populations.

Fueled by political rhetoric about dangerous criminal immigrants, many white Americans assume low-status immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Syria, Somalia and other countries President Donald Trump labeled “shithole” nations have no legal right to be in the United States, new research in the journal American Sociological Review suggests.

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.

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.