Paul Tran wins Poetry Foundation award

Paul Tran, a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow in The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, is one of five young poets awarded a $25,800 prize from the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine.

‘Blink’ and you won’t miss amyloids

Tiny protein structures called amyloids are key to understanding certain devastating age-related diseases, but they are so minuscule they can’t be seen using conventional microscopic methods. A team of engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new technique that uses temporary fluorescence, causing the amyloids to flash or “blink”, allowing researchers to better spot these problematic proteins.

Ancient livestock dung heaps are now African wildlife hotspots

Wildebeest migration in Serengeti, Africa
Often viewed as wild, naturally pristine and endangered by human encroachment, some of the African savannah’s most fertile and biologically diverse wildlife hotspots owe their vitality to heaps of dung deposited there over thousands of years by the livestock of wandering herders, suggests new research in the journal Nature.