Science & Technology

Himadri Pakrasi, PhD, director of the International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability, sat down recently with Peter Raven, PhD, the George Engelmann Professor of Botany Emeritus in Arts & Sciences and president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden, for a conversation about the Washington University Climate Change Initiative.

A temporary seismic array in Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica recorded two bursts of activity in 2010 and 2011. Careful analysis of the events shows they originate from a subglacial volcano at the leading end of a volcanic mountain chain. The volcano is unlikely to erupt through the kilometer of ice that covers it but it will melt enough ice to change the way the ice in its vicinity flows.

Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School and School of Engineering & Applied Science have announced a partnership with the startup-focused news organization Techli to promote the growing entrepreneurship community in and around St. Louis.

Washington University, recognized for its leadership in the Sustainable Land Lab, a partnership with the City of St. Louis, and for furthering sustainability efforts on campus, was one of six entities to receive a sustainability award from the City of St. Louis Nov. 6 during the Mayor’s Sustainability Summit.

Washington University has received a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to foster student diversity in its PhD training program in the biomedical sciences. Pictured are inaugural scholars from the program.

Washington University’s Bear Cub Fund supports innovative translational research to help investigators demonstrate the commercial potential of their technologies. Grant applications are due Nov. 30.

Shrinivas Kulkarni, McArthur Professor of Astronomy & Planetary Science at Caltech, will deliver the sixth annual Robert M. Walker Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, in Room 100, Whitaker Hall, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The talk, titled “Booms, Burps & Bumps: the Dynamic Universe,” describes transient astronomical objects, violent, deep sky events typically visible only for a few days. It is free and open to the public.

A small molecule called VIP, known to synchronize time-keeping neurons in the brain’s biological clock, has the startling effect of desynchronizing them at higher dosages, says a research team at Washington University in St. Louis. Neurons knocked for a loop by a burst of VIP are better able to re-synchronize to abrupt shifts in the light-dark cycle like those that make jet lag or shift work so miserable.

Christopher Gill, PhD, has received a four-year, $398,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to promote the improved safety of cyber-physical systems such as cars and planes.

Ram Dixit’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that a protein named after the katana, or samurai sword, plays a crucial role in patterning the “skeleton” inside plant cells. The work provides a clue to the long-standing mystery of how the cytoskeletons within both plant and animal cells become organized in function-specific patterns.