Science & Technology

Shirley Dyke (left) and Pengcheng Wang adjust wireless sensors onto a model laboratory building in Dyke’s laboratory. An earthquake engineer at Washington University in St. Louis has successfully performed the first test of wireless sensors in the simulated structural control of a model laboratory building. Shirley J. Dyke, Ph.D., the Edward C. Dicke Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Washington University Structural Control and Earthquake Engineering Laboratory, combined the wireless sensors with special controls called magnetorheological dampers to limit damage from a simulated earthquake load. More…

Tabatha Heet, a junior earth and planetary sciences major and Pathfinder student, shows Ray Arvidson, earth and planetary sciences department chair, a potential landing site for the Phoenix mission to Mars.Earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are paving the way for a smooth landing on Mars for the Phoenix Mission scheduled to launch in August this year by making sure the set-down literally is not a rocky one. A team led by Raymond E. Arvidson, Ph.D., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been analyzing images taken from a NASA instrument to make sure that the Phoenix spacecraft lands in a spot on the Red planet’s northern plains that is relatively rock-free. Video included.

Science on Tap, Washington University’s monthly informal science colloquium, is cited in Wired magazine’s April issue. The program is noted along with seven similar forums across the country that promote science conversation in a pub-like setting. Established in fall 2005, Science on Tap highlights topics developed by Danforth Campus scientists through public discussions at Schlafly Bottleworks at 7260 Southwest Ave. in Maplewood.

For the first time in the United States, the presidents of 12 premier universities from Asia and the Middle East will gather at Washington University in St. Louis May 4-7 to discuss ways their institutions are addressing global energy and environmental concerns. The International Symposium on Energy and Environment is sponsored by Washington University’s McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

An international consortium of researchers, including scientists at the Genome Sequencing Center, has decoded the genome of the rhesus macaque monkey and compared it with the genomes of humans and their closest living relatives – the chimps – revealing that the three primate species share about 93 percent of the same DNA. Washington University scientists also recently completed the raw sequences for the orangutan and marmoset genomes.

“Living St. Louis,” a show on KETC (Channel 9) that showcases the colorful culture of our region, will include a segment on Washington University’s Crow observatory tonight at 7 p.m. The segment will also air at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, April 15, and by Wednesday, April 11, it will be streamed on KETC’s Web site at www.ketc.org.

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.