Science & Technology

Engineer Tae Seok Moon has made the most complex logic circuit ever assembled in a single bacterium. The logic circuit, in which genes and the molecules that turn the genes on or off function as logic gates, the simple devices that form the basis for electronic circuits, is one step in an effort to make programmable bacteria that can make biofuels, degrade pollutants, or attack cancer or infections.

Tiffany Knight, PhD, associate professor of biology and director of the Environmental Studies Program in Arts & Science, is on sabbatical in Hawaii working to pull some of its many endangered plant species back from the brink.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are inviting the world to take part in an online experiment that will allow participants to see how their individual scores on a face-name memory test compare with those of other test takers.

Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the tomb of Lady K’abel, a seventh-century Maya Holy Snake Lord considered one of great queens of Classic Maya civilization. The tomb was discovered during excavations of the royal Maya city of El Peru-Waka’ in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, by a team of archaeologists led by Washington University in St. Louis’ David Freidel, co-director of the expedition.

International economic forecaster and social observer Jeremy Rifkin will talk about preparing for the third industrial revolution at noon Thursday, Oct. 11, in Graham Chapel. A book signing will precede the lecture.

A team of engineers at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University has received two grants totaling more than $1.3 million to develop innovative ways to cleanly burn coal for energy. The awards are part of a more than $5 billion investment strategy by the Obama Administration in clean coal technologies and research and development. ​

For 100 years, the dogma has been that amino-acid sequences determine protein folding and that the folded structure determines the protein’s function. But as a Washington University in St. Louis engineer explains in the  Sept. 20 issue of Science, a large class of proteins doesn’t adhere to the structure-function paradigm. Called intrinsically disordered proteins, these proteins fail fold either in whole or in part and yet they are functional.

Washington University undergraduate students with great solutions to problems can win $25,000 to take their innovative ideas from concept to their own business. The School of Engineering & Applied Science has launched the Discovery Competition with the goal to promote new and innovative discoveries to solve challenges or needs.

Developing new and innovative approaches for the teaching of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is the primary goal of an interdisciplinary conference to be held Sept. 27-28 at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education & Conference Center at Washington University in St. Louis.

On September 7 the Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE) announced that Kathryn Miller, PhD, professor and chair of biology at Washington University in St. Louis has been selected as one of 40 Vision and Change Leadership Fellows. Over the next year the Vision and Change Leadership Fellows will consider and then recommend models for improving undergraduate life-sciences education.