ANITA III launched over Antarctica
Calm winds allowed the ANITA III experiment to be launched into the polar vortex above Antarctica on Dec. 17. The instrument consists of 48 radio receivers that are listening for pings that will be generated when ultra-high-energy cosmic rays generate radio-frequency bursts that reflect off the ice and up to the instrument at a float altitude of 120,000 feet, four times higher than commerical airliners cruise.
Hunting for dark matter in a gold mine
An astrophysicist at Washington University in St. Louis is among the team hunting for an elusive particle called a WIMP, that may be the fundamental particle of dark matter. To catch this notoriously wily particle they have built a detector consisting of a large vat of xenon in a deep chamber of a played-out gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
World’s fastest 2-D camera may enable new scientific discoveries
A team of biomedical engineers in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has developed the world’s fastest receive-only 2-D camera, a device that can capture events up to 100 billion frames per second.
Most American presidents destined to fade from nation’s memory, study suggests
American presidents spend their time in office trying
to carve out a prominent place in the nation’s collective memory, but
most are destined to be forgotten within 50-to-100 years of their
serving as president, suggests a study on presidential name recall
released Nov. 27 by the journal Science.
Tibetan cultures settled world’s ‘roof top’ 3,600 years ago, study finds
Xinyi Liu Barley harvest in Zuoni County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. An archaeology dig on the “roof of the world” has yielded evidence that humans figured out much earlier than previously known how to survive year-round in farming and grazing settlements in extreme high-altitude regions of the Tibetan Plateau, finds research released Nov. 20 in […]
Three WUSTL faculty named AAAS fellows
Three faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. They are Mary C. Dinauer, MD, PhD, David M. Holtzman, MD, and Robert G. Kranz, PhD.
Exploring the genomes of mice and men
New research by Ting Wang, PhD, (left) and graduate student Vasavi Sundaram has uncovered some striking differences in the genomes of humans and mice that can help scientists determine when a mouse may be a good stand-in to study human biology and disease.
It’s not always the DNA
Scientists have mostly ignored mRNA, the molecule that ferries information from DNA to the cellular machines that make proteins, because these DNA transcripts are ephemeral and soon destroyed. But mRNA can be just as
important as DNA scientists at Washington University in St. Louis say. They found that oxidized messenger RNA jams the cellular machines that
make protein. The failure to clear the jams and chew up bad messengers
is associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
Washington University receives new grant to host Amgen Scholars Program
Washington University in St. Louis has been awarded a grant from the Amgen Foundation that will provide hands-on laboratory experience to undergraduate students through the Amgen Scholars Program. This marks the fifth year that Washington University is participating in the program.
Olin Cup finalists offer innovative solutions, compete for top prize
Ten finalists in the 2014 Olin Cup Competition are offering novel solutions to real-world challenges and will vie for $70,000 in seed money to start a new company. The Olin Cup is sponsored by the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis.
Older Stories