Students in CELect course make impact on local startups

St. Louis is becoming widely recognized as a successful hub for startup businesses, with a wide range of groups and services that provide a support network for budding entrepreneurs. WUSTL students are getting a firsthand look at one of those resources this semester as they help formulate pricing strategies, marketing plans and competitive analysis for businesses working at T-REX in downtown St. Louis.

Putting the squeeze on rocks

WUSTL geologist Philip Skemer has built a custom-made rock-formation appartus that traps a rock sample between tungsten carbide anvils about a quarter inch in diameter within a 100-ton hydraulic press and then twists the sample slowly from below. His target pressure is six giga-pascals, the pressure 250 kilometers down, to the base of the tectonic plates. He will use the apparatus to determine through experiment the mechanisms that lead mantle rocks to flow, dragging the tectonic plates with them.

Skemer will use NSF CAREER award to understand rock flow in Earth’s mantle

Philip Skemer, PhD, assistant professor in the department of earth and planetary science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER award) from the National Science Foundation. He will use the award for a series of experiments in which rock samples will be deformed at the extreme temperatures and pressures they encounter along the boundaries where plates collide.
Strassmann installed as Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology

Strassmann installed as Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology

Biologist Joan E. Strassmann, PhD, was installed Jan. 23 as the Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences in a ceremony in Holmes Lounge. Following the formal installation, Strassmann gave an entertaining talk about a high-stakes gamble she and Queller made 15 years ago: to switch from studying cooperation and conflict in social insects, famous for their complex societal arrangements, to studying it in an amoeba, whose claim to fame had been its simple lifestyle.

Institute for School Partnership’s Darwin Day celebration to highlight evolution education

WUSTL’s Institute for School Partnership is committed to evolution education as part of a sound K-12 science curriculum, and it kicks off its second annual Darwin Day celebration Friday and Saturday, Feb. 7 and 8, with workshops for teachers and students. Darwin Day is celebrated internationally on or around Feb. 12, Darwin’s birthday, as a celebration of science and humanity. Highlighting the weekend on the WUSTL campus: a visit from alum Sean B. Carroll, PhD, vice president for science education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Daydreaming about summer excursions?​​

Along the Missouri River between St. Louis and Hermann, a restored German settlement, is an enchanted valley blessed by low-density land use where people grow North American grapes for Missouri wine, groundcover in interlocking trays for green roofs, vegetables for St. Louis locivore restaurants and native trees for environmentally conscious landscapers. WUSTL readers will recognize many of the contributers to Missouri River Country, a book that celebrates this land and the people who have lived there. All proceeds from the book’s sales will go to land conservation.
Happy 10th anniversary Opportunity!

Happy 10th anniversary Opportunity!

Ten years ago, on Jan. 24, 2004, the Opportunity rover landed on a flat plain in the southern highlands of the planet Mars and rolled into an impact crater scientists didn’t even know existed. In honor of the rover’s 10th anniversary, Ray Arvidson, PhD, deputy principal investigator of the rover mission, recently took an audience on a whirlwind tour of the rover’s decade-long adventures and discoveries.
Older Stories