Science & Technology

Daniel Moran, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering and neurobiology in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, is developing brain-computer interfaces based on grids of electrodes that lie beneath the skull but outside the dura mater, the protective membrane that covers the brain. His next project is to slip a thin 32-electrode grid he designed with a colleague under a macaque’s skill and to train the monkey to control — strictly by thinking about it — a computational model of a macaque arm.

Eden Brukman (left), vice president of the International Living Building Institute, presents Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton with an award recognizing Washington University in St. Louis’ Living Learning Center as a Living Building. The Living Learning Center, located at the Tyson Research Center in west St. Louis County, was one of only two buildings to meet the institute’s Living Building Challenge in 2010.

Washington University in St. Louis students are helping students in Scott McClintock’s middle school science class at Maplewood-Richmond Heights use wind turbines, solar collectors and other materials to investigate ways to maximize energy from renewable sources.

Focusing light into a scattering medicum such as tissue has been a dream since the beginning of biomedical optics, according to Lihong Wang, PhD, WUSTL biomedical imaging expert. Previous techniques allowed light to be focused only within a millimeter of the skin. Now Wang has invented a technique called “TRUE”  that uses an ultrasound guide star to allow scattered optical light to be focused deep within tissue.    

David Peters, PhD, the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has received the Reed Aeronautics Award for 2011 from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The Reed Award is the highest award an individual can receive for achievements in the field of aeronautical science and engineering.

Collaborating with researchers in NASA, Daren Chen, PhD, has used the miniature particle size that he had developed as a part of a special smoke detector that was tested by the National Institute of Standards and Testing on more than 200 different kinds of fires and found to be 100 percent accurate. “I’m very interested in making this better sensor cheap enough to eventually allow networks in large buildings and ultimately save human lives,” Chen says.

Mark Alford, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, participated Jan. 29 in a roundtable discussion in New York about the quantum mind theory of consciousness. Quantum mind is a fashionable theory originally proposed by physicist Roger Penrose that grounds perception in the periodic collapse of quantum entangled electrons in our brain. Alford, who studies phenomenon that can only be explained by quantum mechanics nonetheless played the role of the skeptic in the discussion, which was videotaped and posted on the web.

Washington University engineering students Nalin Katta and Matthew MacEwan, who also is a School of Medicine student, won the Olin Cup business plan competition Feb. 3 and $50,000 in seed investment for an invention that can replace the protective covering of the brain. With 49 entrants, this year’s competition was the largest group of ventures yet.

Crop yields from India’s first genetically modified crop may have been overemphasized, as modest rises in crop yields may come at the expense of sustainable farm management, says a new study by a Washington University in St. Louis anthropologist.

In the Jan. 14 issue of Science, Washington University in St. Louis biologist Sarah C.R. Elgin, PhD, and 12 other biomedical research scientists recommend seven steps that universities can take to support the teacher-scientist, ranging in difficulty from educating faculty about research on learning or creating teaching discussion groups to creating (monetary) awards and named professorships for outstanding teachers and requiring excellence in teaching for promotion.