Science & Technology

Courtesy PhotoA scholarly paper on the status of the 127 known caves in the 508-square-mile county shows developers are discarding the formations with impunity, says co-author Robert E. Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences.

Washington University today joined a consortium of leading scientific and medical institutions around the country to warn Congress that persistent flat-funding of biomedical research could thwart advances in treatments for such diseases as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Following today’s Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS Committee hearing on funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Washington University and the eight other institutions issued a report at a Capitol Hill press conference on funding for U.S. medical research.

Eminent British archaeologist Lord Colin Renfrew will speak for the Assembly Series on cognitive archaeology and how we become human at 4 p.m. March 22 in Graham Chapel.

Robert Osburn (yellow helmet, recording and sketching) and WUSTL graduate student Jenny Lippmann (measuring and doing compass readings) conducting the cave survey in a small passage of 23 degree cave in Crawford County, Missouri.The Caves of St. Louis County and the Bridges of Madison County share a common theme: loss. The former, a scholarly paper that appears as the sole entry of the current issue of Missouri Speleology, is a description of some of St. Louis County’s 127 known caves and a warning that development over the past two centuries has eliminated or destroyed many caves in a state that could quite rightly call itself the Cave State. The latter is a tear-jerking novel, made into a movie by Clint Eastwood about a doomed, unlikely love affair, a hallmark of the ’90s with all the permanence of the Backstreet Boys. Caves, though, are in trouble, in St. Louis County, Missouri, and elsewhere, says co-author Robert Criss, Ph.D., professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The figure shows the dynamics of a slab-tear earthquake (top), compared with a shallow thrust earthquake (bottom). The slab-tearing event typically doesn’t feature an accompanying tsunami.Seismologists at Washington University in St. Louis and their colleagues in Australia, Japan and Tonga have determined why a large earthquake in Tonga did not cause a large tsunami. A tsunami warning was issued around the Pacific Rim following the magnitude 8.0 earthquake on May 3, 2006, but the resulting tsunami was very minor and caused no damage.

Eminent British archaeologist Lord Colin Renfrew to speak on cognitive archaeology and how we become human, at the Assembly Series, 4 p.m., March 22 in Graham Chapel.

Jeffrey MarlowJeffrey J. Marlow, a senior in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of 20 students nationwide named to the 2007 All-USA College Academic First Team, USA Today’s recognition program for outstanding undergraduates. Two other Washington University students were named to the third team and one student received honorable mention, resulting in Washington University tying with the University of Alabama for the most students selected in the newspaper’s competition.

Eric ChouTesting the wake-sleep cycleA biologist at Washington University in St. Louis and his collaborators have identified the factor in mammalian brain cells that keeps cells in synchrony so that functions like the wake-sleep cycle, hormone secretion and loco motor behaviors are coordinated daily.

NASALet’s visit Europa!William B. McKinnon, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, says the space science community suffers from an embarrassment of riches when pondering which of Jupiter’s moons should be studied next, because they all differ in the way that they can reveal more about planets and how they behave. But he thinks it is Europa that clearly commands the most attention.

Eric ChouA slice through the earth, showing the attenuation anomalies within the mantle.A seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis has made the first 3-D model of seismic wave damping — diminishing — deep in the Earth’s mantle and has revealed the existence of an underground water reservoir at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean. The research, which analyzed 80,000 shear waves from more than 600,000 seismograms, provides the first evidence for water existing in the Earth’s deep mantle.