Science & Technology

Josh Smith in the Libyan desert.They’re back! Joshua Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, and D. Tab Rasmussen, Ph.D., professor of anthropology, both in Arts & Sciences, are stateside, teaching at Washington University after returning from what is thought to be the first-ever collaborative paleontological expedition between American and Libyan scientists. Smith and Rasmussen were in Libya for just three weeks in August of 2005. They were in the field for only 10 days, and they and their colleagues visited 13 new places that have produced Cretaceous-aged vertebrate fossils. They found fossils of sharks, bony fish, crocodiles and turtles.

ComptonPhysicist Arthur Holly Compton, Ph.D., Washington University’s first faculty member to receive a Nobel Prize (1927), is still getting recognition for his groundbreaking research more than 40 years after his death. The latest acknowledgment comes from the American Physical Society (APS), which has designated Washington University in St. Louis — where Compton did his Nobel Prize-winning research on X-rays — as a site of historical significance to physics. The APS Historic Sites Committee selected Washington University along with four other U.S. sites to be the first listed on the APS’ recently launched Register of Historic Sites. A ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 12 in the Women’s Building Lounge, followed by three talks about Compton beginning at 2 p.m. in Crow Hall, Room 201.

The American Physical Society Historic Sites Committee selected WUSTL along with four other U.S. sites, honoring physicist Arthur Holly Compton.

Carl M. Bender, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, delivered a talk, titled “Ghost Busting: Making Sense of Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians,” as a principal invited speaker at four international conferences this summer. The first conference was the 10th Claude Itzykson Meeting on “Quantum Field Theory Then and Now,” held in June at the Service […]

Researchers at the Genome Sequencing Center (GSC) at the School of Medicine will lead the sequencing of the genome of maize, more popularly known to consumers as corn. The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy allocated a total of $32 million for sequencing maize. The GSC maize genome project will receive $29.5 million of that funding.

All lit up: the dance floor in actionThe talent and ingenuity of Washington University engineering students are being put to the test with a large-scale, computer-controlled dance floor that will light up the night on Saturday, Nov. 12. That’s the date of the Engineering Student Council’s annual dance party, Vertigo, to be held from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. in Lopata Hall on the Washington University Hilltop Campus.

How ordinary Germans came to accept the wholesale massacre of Jewish people is a central theme in Browning’s pioneering scholarship.

Josh Smith compares tooth measurements of unidentified dinosaur species with those of known *Tyrannosaurus* specimens.A paleontologist at WUSTL has concocted a mathematical scheme for identifying dinosaurs based upon measurements of their copious Mesozoic dental droppings. His method could help paleobiologists identify and reconstruct the lives of the creatures that roamed terra firma many millions of years ago.

Allison Miller discusses jocotes with a man in southern Honduras.Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis report that farmers and families in Central America have saved genetic variation in the jocote (ho-CO-tay), (Spondias purpurea), a small tree that bears fruit similar to a tiny mango. And they’ve done this by taking the plants out of the forest, their wild habitat, and growing them close to home for family and local consumption Allison Miller, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado, and former graduate student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, and Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology Barbara Schaal, Ph.D., from Washington University, in conjunction with Peter Raven, Ph.D. Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University and Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, have shown multiple domestications of the jocote in Central America in the midst of large-scale deforestation, a practice that endangers genetic diversity .

Storing hydrogen is problematic. A WUSTL chemist and his colleagues are exploring different approaches to help make hydrogen fuel more practical.A chemist at Washington University in St. Louis hopes to find the right stuff to put the element hydrogen in a sticky situation. Lev Gelb is exploring several different ways to store hydrogen and prepares theoretical models of molecules that could enable storage and transport of hydrogen gas. One process would involve materials that hydrogen would stick to.