Science & Technology

We tend to assume that domestication is a one-way street and that, once domesticated, crop plants stay domesticated. A new study of rice shows, however, that different methods of farming change the evolutionary pressures on crop plants, and the plants easily “de-domesticate,” evolving to take advantage of these opportunities.

Geologist Phil Skemer, of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is assembling a database of three-dimensional models of crystal structures, rock outcrops and landforms that will allow students to study geology in three dimensions.

Long before the advent of agriculture, hunter gatherers began putting down roots in the Middle East, building more permanent homes and altering the ecological balance in ways that allowed the common house mouse to flourish, suggest new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Star-shaped cells called astrocytes, long considered boring, “support cells,” are finally coming into their own. To everyone’s surprise they even play an important role in the body’s master clock, which schedules everything from the release of hormones to the onset of sleepiness.

A four-year study of one rare and one common lupine growing in coastal dunes showed that a native mouse steals most of the rare lupines seeds while they are still attached to the plant. The mouse is a “subsidized species,” given cover for nocturnal forays by European beachgrass, originally planted to stabilize the dunes.

While lead pipes were banned decades ago, they still supply millions of American households with water each day. A team of engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new way to track where dangerous lead particles might be transported in the drinking-water supply during a common abatement procedure.

Nearly 5,000 years ago, the foundations for the vast east-west trade routes of the Great Silk Road were being carved by nomads moving herds to lush mountain pastures, suggests new Arts & Sciences research published in Nature.

By growing phytoplankton called coccolithophores in the lab, scientists were able to understand the large biological overprint on the climate signal encoded by their remains, clearing the way for their use as climate proxies.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, is expanding our understanding of human health into nonhuman realms, studying the bacteria that take up residence in the gut and help define who we become. Indeed, this research suggests you are what you — and your microbes — eat.

By changing one small portion of a stimulus that influences part of one molecule’s function, engineers and researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have opened the door for more insight into how the molecule is associated with high blood pressure, autism and movement disorders.