Science & Technology

Computer science faculty are exposing their undergraduate students to learning in ways that prepare them for interaction in the real work place. It’s not about “staying between the lines,” but more about getting out of your seat, moving around and interacting with your classmates. It’s called active learning, a learning-laboratory-based tutorial teaching concept.

Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of three trips around the globe and working in temperatures that averaged minus 30 degrees Celsius, an international team of scientists, including one from Washington University in St. Louis, has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice. Douglas A. Wiens, Ph.D., WUSTL professor and chair of earth and planetary sciences, is part of the seismology team.

WUSTL astrophysicists have received a five-year, $3,225,740 grant from NASA to design and build Super-TIGER — a Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder — to collect rare atomic particles called galactic cosmic rays. Super-TIGER’s first flight is planned for December 2012.

Paul Alivisatos, Ph.D., shares his pioneering work with nanocrystals for the Assembly Series at 11 a.m. March 4 in Graham Chapel.

Courtesy photoW. Robert Binns and TIGER prelaunch in AntarcticaAstrophysicists at Washington University in St. Louis have received a five-year, $3,225,740 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design and build Super-TIGER — a Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder — and then fly it aboard a high-altitude balloon over Antarctica to collect rare atomic particles called galactic cosmic rays. Super-TIGER’s first flight in search of the origin of cosmic rays is planned for December 2012.

Paul Alivisatos shares his pioneering work with nanocrystals to develop medical breakthroughs in biological imaging at the Assembly Series on Wednesday, March 4, at 11 a.m. in Graham Chapel.

Photo by Don DavisRotating black hole: one of nature’s most perfect objectsA physicist at Washington University in St. Louis has found a new twist on a 40-year-old discovery — “the Carter constant” — about the motion of particles in the external field of a rotating black hole. Clifford M. Will, Ph.D., the James S. McDonnell Professor of Physics in Arts & Sciences, has shown that even in Newton’s gravity, arrangements of masses exist whose gravitational field also admits a Carter-like constant of motion. The finding has implications for gravitational-wave astronomy, he says.

Computer science faculty at Washington University in St. Louis are exposing their undergraduate students to learning in ways that prepare them for interaction in the real work place. It’s not about “staying between the lines,” but more about getting out of your seat, moving around and interacting with your classmates. It’s called active learning, a learning-laboratory- based tutorial teaching concept.

SussmanPrimates are social animals. But why did they become social and what are the causes for the differences in social structure among various primate species? Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, addressed those questions and more in his talk “A Comparative Overview of Primate Social Organization” during the 2009 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Feb. 15 in Chicago.

GoodenoughThe hot topics of global warming and environmental sustainability are concerns that fit neatly within the precepts of religious naturalism, according to Ursula Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to being a renowned cell biologist, Goodenough is a religious naturalist and the author of The Sacred Depths of Nature, a bestselling book on religious naturalism that was published in 1998. Religious naturalism neither requires belief in God nor excludes such faith. Rather, the movement is based on what Goodenough describes as “an exploration of the religious potential of nature.”