Science & Technology

Every day we make thousands of tiny predictions — when the bus will arrive, who is knocking on the door, whether the dropped glass will break. Now, in one of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are beginning to unravel the process by which the brain makes these everyday prognostications.

Biologist Alan R. Templeton fell in love with the eastern collared lizard that lives in the hot, dry Ozark glades when he was 13. By the time he returned from  postgraduate work, 75 percent of the lizard populations had vanished. Over the next 30 years, he reintroduced lizards to a few glades and then sought to establish the disturbance regime that had once sustained them by advocating for the highly controversial process of landscape-scale burning. The cover article in the September issue of Ecology celebrates the success of this prolonged effort.

A clinical warning system undergoing a feasibility study at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis will include wireless sensors that take blood oxygenation and heart-rate readings from at-risk patients once or twice a minute. The data  and lab results in the electronic medical record will be continually scrutinized by a machine-learning algorithm looking for signs of clinical deterioration. If any such signs are found, the system will call a nurse on a cellphone, alerting the nurse to check on the patient.

Two recent research studies have found differences between the distribution of potassium-ion-channel variants in the mouse heart and in the human heart. In the mouse, the ion channels in the atria are different from those in the ventricles. In people there is no such chamber specificity. The difference is crucially important for the development of safe and effective cardiovascular drugs.

Analysis of new images of a curious “hot spot” on the far side of the Moon reveal it to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma. The unusual location of the province and of the surprising composition of the lava that formed it offer tantalizing clues to the Moon’s thermal history. The discovery has just been published in Nature Geoscience.

Inherited forms of Alzheimer’s disease may be detectable as many as 20 years before problems with memory and thinking develop, scientists reported July 20 at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Paris.

Some 75 K-12 educators from across St. Louis attended a one-day conference June 17 in WUSTL’s Whitaker Hall to explore using LEGOs to engage their students in learning science, technology, engineering and math. The teachers built and programmed robots using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT software.

Washington University’s Department of Genetics has established the Genome Technology Access Center to offer high-speed genome sequencing and other advanced genetic technologies to scientists both within and beyond the university.  

A ring-shaped laser no bigger than a pinprick can accurately detect and count individual viruses, the particles that jumpstart cloud formation or those that contaminate the air we breathe. A particle disturbs the light circulating in the ring, splitting the lasing frequency. This split is a measure of the particle’s size.

DNA analysis of more than 1300 coconuts from around the world reveals that the coconut was brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. What’s more, coconut genetics also preserve a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.