Science & Technology

Lihong Wang, Ph.D., became the first Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering in a Nov. 29 ceremony.

Harvard physicist Lisa Randall explains how our visible world of four dimensions could be embedded in a higher-dimensional universe at the Assembly Series at 11 a.m. on Feb. 7 in Graham Chapel.

Michael Marrah and Bradley Castanho have been named assistant vice chancellors for research and co-directors of the Office of Technology Management (OTM) at Washington University. Together, they bring expertise in business, science and law to the OTM, which is charged with identifying University discoveries that have commercial potential and licensing them to private companies, where the technology can be developed for the benefit of the public.

Studying stars has never been so easy, thanks to Ernst K. Zinner, Ph.D., research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University. For the past 30-plus years, Zinner has helped develop and fine-tune increasingly sophisticated instruments that allow researchers to get detailed information about circumstellar and interstellar dust — actual stardust — right in their own labs. These precision instruments use a measurement technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). To recognize Zinner’s important contributions to the development of SIMS and its many applications in the earth and space sciences, a scientific symposium will be held Feb. 3-4 in Crow Hall, Room 201.

Scientists at the School of Medicine in St. Louis and the biotech firm Nimblegen Systems Inc. have successfully tested a technique for identifying newly recognized DNA variations that may influence disease risk. Rather than focus on errors and alterations in DNA sequence, the new technique highlights variations in the number of copies of a particular gene.

Harvard physicist Lisa Randall explains how our visible world of four dimensions could be embedded in a higher-dimensional universe at the Assembly Series at 11 a.m. on Feb. 7 in Graham Chapel.

Below is a link to the Washington University news release about the U.S. News & World Report undergraduate rankings for 2004-05: http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/3627.html To view a full listing of U.S. News magazine, book and Web-only rankings for 2004-05, please visit the U.S. News & World Report site: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankindex_brief.php

Stardust, the NASA spacecraft mission, was given that name in hopes that the seven-year journey to capture comet samples would bring back to Earth, well, stardust. In an article in a special issue of the journal Science, Washington University researchers are the first to report that a sample they received from the mission actually does contain stardust — particles that are older than the sun.

VIDEO AVAILABLE: Stardust, the NASA spacecraft mission, was given that name in hopes that the seven-year journey to capture comet samples would bring back to Earth, well, stardust. In an article coming out in the Dec. 15, 2006, issue of the journal Science, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are the first to report that a sample they received from the mission actually does contain stardust — particles that are older than the sun.

Photo courtesy NASAStrange Brew: Astronomers are debating whether the matter in these stars is composed of free quarks or crystals of sub-nuclear particles, rather than neutrons.According to the “Strange Matter Hypothesis”, which gained popularity in the paranormal 1980’s, nuclear matter, too, can be strange. The hypothesis suggests that small conglomerations of quarks, the infinitesimally tiny particles that attract by a strong nuclear force to form neutrons and protons in atoms, are the true ground state of matter. The theory has captivated particle physicists worldwide, including one of Washington University’s own. Mark Alford, Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, and collaborators from MIT and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, have used mathematical modeling to discover some properties of theoretical “strange stars,” composed entirely of quark matter. More…