Science & Technology

Computer scientist Michael Brent has developed innovative sequencing techniques that will aid in the sequencing of mammals.A computer scientist at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a novel technique to extract more DNA from a single sequence reaction than is normally possible, reducing both cost and time of the sequencing process. Michael R. Brent, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science, has applied software developed in his Washington University laboratory that sorts through the maze of genetic information and finds predicted sequences.

Carl Frieden, Jeffrey I. Gordon, John F. McDonnell and Carl Phillips can now stand proudly beside Ben Franklin, George Washington, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. Those four from Washington University in St. Louis have joined those four from history as being elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

WUSTL scientists say the present-day Missouri River is narrower and more prone to flooding because of extensive damming of the river.The oldest data available on the Missouri River – from the logs of Lewis and Clark – show that water flow on the river today is far more variable than it was 200 years ago. The data also show that the river is some 220 yards narrower at St. Charles, Mo., today at 500 yards across than in 1804 when it spread out some 720 yards.

WooleyUsing a technique pioneered by Washington University in St. Louis chemist Karen Wooley, Ph.D., scientists have developed a novel way to make discrete carbon nanoparticles for electrical components used in industry and research.

Photo courtesy University of IowaCould there be a link between the obesity epidemic and eugenic thinking? A historian of science at Washington University in St. Louis poses the question.As obesity rates continue to grow in the United States, threatening the health of millions of Americans, a historian of science warns that social problems such as this cannot be solved through science, especially genetics, alone. In this new “gene age” in which large amounts of research funds are used for studies on the genetics of such complex social traits as alcoholism, criminality or obesity, for example, Garland E. Allen, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, says the climate is ripe for a “re-packaged” eugenics in American society. Allen points out that 100 years ago, eugenics, a movement that claimed many social, personality and mental traits were hereditary, was emerging as a major social movement in Europe and the United States. His concern: it might well still be with us today.

In the March 5 issue of Science, Ann Nguyen of Washington University in St. Louis and her advisor, Ernst K. Zinner, Ph.D., research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences, both in Arts & Sciences, describe nine specks of silicate stardust — presolar silicate grains — from one of the most primitive meteorites known. This is the first reported finding of silicate stardust from a meteorite.

HoltenA chemist at Washington University in St. Louis and his colleagues has taken an elegant chemical approach to turn a nonfluorescent organometallic complex into a strong emitter by hampering its internal rotations at the molecular level. Dewey Holten, Ph.D., Washington University professor of chemistry, Jonathan Lindsey, Ph.D., of North Carolina State University and David Bocian, Ph.D., University of California, Riverside, have made a molecule photoluminescent by hindering its intramolecular rotation.

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Administrators from leading American universities come together to discuss environmental initiatives at their respective campuses.

For the first time, researchers have identified organic material in interplanetary dust particles (IDPs), gathered from the Earth’s stratosphere, that was made before the birth of our Solar System.