Science & Technology

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.

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.

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.

In the Jan. 24 edition of the journal Science, Ray Arvidson, PhD, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and deputy principal investigator of the MER mission to Mars, writes in detail about the discoveries made by the Opportunity rover and how these discoveries have shaped our knowledge of the planet.

Four Washington University in St. Louis researchers are being honored as outstanding scientists by the Academy of Science of St. Louis.

Women are underrepresented in the important fields of science, technology, engineering and math — minority women even more so. To help close the gender gap, Washington University will sponsor an innovate new charter school: the Hawthorn Leadership School for Girls, the first single-sex STEM charter school in St. Louis.

Biomedical engineer Lihong Wang, PhD, and researchers in his lab work with lasers used in photoacoustic imaging for early-cancer detection and a close look at biological tissue. But sometimes there are limitations to what they can do, and as engineers, they work to find a way around those limitations. Wang and his team have discovered a unique and novel way to use an otherwise unwanted side effect of the lasers they use — the photo bleaching effect — to their advantage.

Microbes set up their own markets, comparing bids for commodities, hoarding to obtain a better price, and generally behaving in ways more commonly associated with Wall Street than the microscopic world. This has led an international team of scientists, including two from Washington University in St. Louis, to ask which, if any, market features are specific to cognitive agents.

Lithium-ion batteries, such as those used in electric vehicles, are in high demand, with a global market value expected to reach $33.1 billion in 2019. But their high price tags and short lives need to be addressed before they can be used in more consumer, energy and medical products. Venkat Subramanian, PhD, associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering, and his team are working to solve this problem by developing optimal charging profiles for the batteries.

Lihong Wang, PhD, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University in Sweden. Wang, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has been one of the prominent figures in developing photoacoustic imaging technology in biomedicine, says Stefan Andersson-Engels, professor of atomic physics at Lund University.