Science & Technology

It’s a big claim, but Washington University in St. Louis planetary scientist Frédéric Moynier says his group has discovered evidence that the Moon was born in a flaming blaze of glory when a body the size of Mars collided with the early Earth.

A scat-sniffing dog by the name of Pinkerton may be the best friend ever for a small, highly elusive group of endangered monkey and gibbon species now scrambling for survival in the vanishing forests of a remote Chinese mountain range. The high-energy Belgian Malinois is a critical player in efforts to preserve the black-crested gibbon and the Phayre’s leaf monkey.

The International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) will celebrate its inaugural I-CARES day Friday, Oct. 19. The celebration will feature a talk by Peter H. Raven, former president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, on climate change and its impact on biodiversity, and a presentation by T.R. Kidder, professor and chair of anthropology, on the idea that we may be entering a new geological era, called the Anthropocene, in which humans are the primary geological change agents. There also will be activities for students, including a QR-code scavenger hunt.​

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.

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.

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.

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.