Science & Technology

The list of authors for an article on the comparative genomics of a fruit fly chromosome, published online May 11 by the journal G3, includes 940 undergraduates from 63 institutions. It is the result of an effort, coordinated through Washington University in St. Louis, to provide many more students with a hands-on research experience than has traditionally been possible.

There’s a small room in Rudolph Hall that most students walk right past without noticing. But when anyone finds it, they usually insist all their friends come and look as well. It’s one of those special things about the university no student ever forgets, and this is the story of how it came to be there.

After an epic journey across the breadth of the solar system, the New Horizons spacecraft is finally nearing its destination: the Pluto system, a staggering three billion miles from Earth. William McKinnon, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, explains that our understanding of Pluto has been transformed in the nearly 10 years the probe has been en route to its target. ​

​​The International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) has announced the winners from its 2015 call for proposals. This year, the center awarded funds to 10 projects involving nearly 30 Washington University faculty from four schools.

​When it comes to rewards and punishments, which is more effective — the carrot or the stick? Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have devised a simple experiment to test the effects of rewards and punishments on behavior and have found that punishments seem to be more effective at influencing behavior.

Sediment cores from two lakes in the Mississippi floodplain show that Cahokia, the largest prehistoric settlement in the Americas north of Mexico, emerged during a period when there were few severe floods on the river and that its decline and abandonment coincided with the return of large floods.

A demographic study of two endangered plants at Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco shows that they favor  recently disturbed open areas over areas that have established plant cover. The study strengthens the case for removing the beachgrass originally planted to stabilize the dunes and allowing the sand to move in response to storm surges and strong tides.

​By training a type of grasshopper to recognize odors, a team of biomedical engineers at Washington University in St. Louis is learning more about the brain and how it processes information from its senses.

Introduced plants make up roughly half the diet of two subspecies of endangered tortoise, field research in the Galapagos reveals. Tortoises  seem to prefer non-native to native plants and the plants may help them to stay well-nourished during the dry season.

​A collaboration of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Korea University used copper oxide nanowires as a catalyst to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which can then be used as a feeder material to create plastics and higher-carbon polymers. The reduction of carbon dioxide is a very energy-intensive process, so the researchers have developed a method to tap solar energy to allow the conversion.