Science & Technology

Six WUSM researchers have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. AAAS awards the rank of fellow — the highest honor it confers — to researchers who have made scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science.

NorbergRichard E. Norberg, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named a co-recipient of the 2004 ISMAR Prize, the highest honor the International Society of Magnetic Resonance awards.

Henric S. Krawczynski, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Outstanding Junior Investigator Award in high-energy physics, one of eight scientists in the country to receive the prestigious recognition in 2004.

Henric S. Krawczynski, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Outstanding Junior Investigator Award in high-energy physics, one of eight scientists in the country to receive the prestigious recognition in 2004.

Robert Richards, a prominent expert on Darwin and evolutionary theory, will present a lecture titled “Did Ernst Haeckel Commit Fraud in Defending Darwin’s Theory,” on Oct. 21 as part of the Assembly Series. Richards conducts research and teaches in the history and philosophy of biology and psychology.

CiechanoverAaron Ciechanover, M.D., D.Sc., visiting professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and Research Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, was selected Oct. 6 to receive the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Eric C. Leuthardt, M.D., a Washington University neurosurgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, has been named one of this year’s Top Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT’s Magazine of Innovation. The distinction is awarded each year to 100 individuals under age 35 whose innovative work in technology has a profound impact on the world.

A biomedical engineer at WUSTL has determined love taps are better than love jolts in addressing defibrillation.When it comes to affairs of the heart, love taps are preferred over love jolts. That is the result of a team of heart researchers including Igor Efimov, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, trying to effect a better implantable heart defibrillator. Efimov and his colleagues have modeled a system where an implantable heart defibrillator focuses in on rogue electrical waves created during heart arrhythmia and busts up the disturbance, dissipating it and preventing cardiac arrest.

Image courtesy USGSA team of geologists from China and the United States, including two from WUSTL, report evidence of at least three ice ages occurring between 750 and 600 million years ago.Glaciers reached Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the most recent ice age about 20,000 years ago. But much harsher ice ages hit the Earth in an ancient geological interval known as “the Cryogenian Period” between 750 and 600 million years ago. A team of geologists from China and the United States, including two from Washington University in St. Louis, now report evidence of at least three ice ages during that ancient time.

PakrasiA research team of biologists and engineers led by faculty at Washington University in St. Louis is seeking to find the Fountain of Youth — not in Florida, but in photosynthetic cyanobacteria (ancient little blue-green algae). Looking at the cellular systems in cyanobacteria, and then in a model plant and a moss species, these researchers want to determine how these organisms protect themselves from radicals, which are chemical culprits in the aging process in everything from bacteria to human beings.