New maps hint at how electric fish got their big brains

Fish Brain Maps
Washington University researchers have mapped the regions of the brain in mormyrid fish in extremely high detail. In a study published in the Nov. 15 issue of Current Biology, they report that the part of the brain called the cerebellum is bigger in members of this fish family compared to related fish — and this may be associated with their use of weak electric discharges to locate prey and to communicate with one another.

What a deep dive into the deep blue sea is teaching us

Slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates under the ocean drag about three times more water down into the deep Earth than previously estimated, according to a first-of-its-kind seismic study that spans the Mariana Trench. The work has important implications for the global water cycle, according to Douglas A. Wiens in Arts & Sciences.

Washington People: Jennifer Silva

Jennifer Silva
Jennifer Silva, MD, a pediatric electrophysiologist at the School of Medicine, treats children with abnormal heart rhythms. She has co-founded a startup that is developing technology to help doctors see real-time 3D holograms of the heart during procedures to fix erratic heart rhythms.

WashU Expert: Death of a salesman — Stan Lee

“Stan Lee was a man of contradictions,” says comics scholar Peter Coogan, “self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating; a great collaborator and someone who took credit for others’ work; hugely successful except when his endeavors crashed in failure. But unlike the superheroes, neither side was secret.”

Campus blood drive Nov. 14

The next universitywide blood drive will be held Wednesday, Nov. 14, on the Danforth and Medical campuses. All faculty, staff and students are encouraged to participate. 

‘A big, huge, self-destructive mistake’

Hiro is young and successful in New York, a world away from her old Kentucky home. But when her little sister decides to marry — at age 22, to a born-again Christian she just met — Hiro responds, determined to stop the wedding. Washington University’s Ron Himes will direct “Kentucky” Nov. 15-18 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.