Science & Technology

Heme, a crucial component of the biomachinery that squeezes energy out of food, must be transported across membranes but without exposing its central iron atom to oxidation. Work at Washington University shows how it is done.

An international group of anthropologists offers a new theory about the diffusion of maize to the Southwestern United States and the impact it had. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study, co-authored by Gayle Fritz, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, and colleagues, suggests that maize was passed from group to group of Southwestern hunter-gatherers. These people took advantage of improved moisture conditions by integrating a storable and potentially high-yielding crop into their broad-spectrum subsistence strategy.

Nearly 100 years after the discovery of cosmic rays, a new type of gamma-ray telescope is finally allowing physicists to make images of cosmic-ray nurseries.

A group at Washington University recently tackled a simple circuit in the visual processing area of a chicken’s brain that detects motion in its field of view — with surprising results.

A tiny cage of gold covered with a smart polymer responds to light, opening to empty its contents and resealing when the light is turned off. The smart nanocages could be used to deliver drugs directly to target sites, thus avoiding systemic side effects.

The architects of the National Research Council’s roadmap for the next decade, “America’s Energy Future: Technology and Transformation,” will meet with top officers of energy companies today to discuss this capstone report that recommends investing in clean energy technologies. The meeting will be held from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, 2009, at Washington University’s May Auditorium in Simon Hall.

America has the potential to solve its energy crisis over the next decade, but doing so will require immediate investment in clean energy technologies, says Mark S. Wrighton, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis and vice chair of a National Resource Council report on America’s energy challenges. The report will be the topic of a symposium to be held from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2, in the May Auditorium in Simon Hall on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

Andrew H. Knoll, Ph.D., Fisher Professor of Natural History and professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, will discuss the evidence for life on Mars at 7 p.m. Oct. 30 in Room 300, Laboratory Sciences Building, on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis.

SciFest 09 is festival where everyone can engage in science. The St. Louis Science Center’s SciFest 09, which runs through Oct. 11, brings together world-renowned scientists and experts to help participants see science in a new way. Washington University students and faculty will present sessions exploring everything from the science of baseball and the healing power of puppies to images of a brain at work and the bionics of hip replacements.

Intrigued by the discovery last February of Corot-7b, a rocky exoplanet, WUSTL scientists set out to investigate its atmosphere the only way so-far possible: by simulation.