Newsroom Stories

Photo by David Kilper / WUSTL PhotoKenneth Olsen, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, examines a cultivated rice plant in the Goldfarb Greenhouse.Red rice sounds like a New Orleans dish or a San Francisco treat. But it’s a weed, the biggest nuisance to American rice growers, who are the fourth largest exporters of rice in the world. And rice farmers hate the pest, which, if harvested along with domesticated rice, reduces marketability and contaminates seed stocks. Complicating matters is the fact that red rice and cultivated rice are exactly the same species, so an herbicide cannot be developed that seeks out only red rice. It would kill cultivated rice, too. But now a plant evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) at $1.12 million for two years to perform genetic studies on red rice to understand molecular differences between the two that someday could provide the basis for a plan to eradicate the weed. More…

“I smell a rat!” Researchers have found that the sense of smelling in mice is affected by a biological clock devoted entirely to olfaction — smelling stuff, like sleeping and waking, is on a daily cycle.Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered a large biological clock in the smelling center of mice brains and have revealed that the sense of smell for mice is stronger at night, peaking in evening hours and waning during day light hours. A team led by Erik Herzog, Ph.D., Washington University associate professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, discovered the clock in the olfactory bulb, the brain center that aids the mouse in detecting odors. More…

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…

Explaining “why the French don’t like headscarves” in public schools.March will mark the third anniversary of a law passed by the French government banning from public schools all clothing that indicates a student’s religious affiliation. Though written in a religion-neutral way, most people in France, and around the world, knew the law was aimed at keeping Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to class. But why? John R. Bowen, Ph.D., a sociocultural anthropologist in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was in France at the time and has written an enlightening book, recently published by Princeton University Press, titled “Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves: Islam, the State and Public Space.” More…

Courtesy Metro Theater CompanyHana BradyIn March 2000, a child’s suitcase bearing the name and birth date of Hana Brady arrived at the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center. Painted across this battered piece of luggage was the German word “waisenkind,” or “orphan.” With these few clues, a determined group of Japanese schoolchildren, led by their teacher, Fumiko Ishioka, set out to uncover Hana’s identity. Their story, intertwined with that of young Hana, became the basis of “Hana’s Suitcase” (2002), Karen Levine’s acclaimed children’s book. In January, Washington University in St. Louis will co-produce a U.S. premiere stage adaptation by the playwright Emil Sher. More…

Frank J. Stadermann, Ph.D., senior research scientist in physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University and a sample adviser for NASA’s Stardust mission will discuss his research team’s significant find from the Stardust mission, the first U.S. space mission dedicated to the exploration of a comet, and the first robotic mission designed to return extraterrestrial material from outside the orbit of the Moon.

It’s long been assumed that people are willing to pay more for an item if they know a portion of the proceeds will go to charity. But do they really? Two professors from the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis collected data from eBay auctions. They compared prices of items on eBay’s regular auction with items auctioned through its “Giving Works” program where sellers choose to donate part of their earnings to a non-profit of their choosing. They found out that buyers are willing to pay a 5 percent premium on average for those items linked to a cause. More…

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.Polar layered deposits exposed in a scarp at the head of Chasma Boreale, a large canyon on Mars.Mars climate history, recorded in ice-rich deposits near the poles, on crater-wall cliffs and ancient sand dunes, is being revealed by a trio of NASA instruments now flying over and rolling across the planet, suggest Washington University in St. Louis researchers playing key roles in the mission.

More than a decade of searching for factors that make the common parasite Toxoplasma gondii dangerous to humans has pinned 90 percent of the blame on just one of the parasite’s approximately 6,000 genes.

Scientists have identified the first biochemical marker linked to sleep loss, an enzyme in saliva known as amylase, which increases in activity when sleep deprivation is prolonged. Researchers hope to make amylase the first of a panel of biomarkers that will aid diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders and may one day help assess the risk of falling asleep at the wheel of a car or in other dangerous contexts.