Arts & Sciences

In a meta-analysis of published research, psychologist Calvin Lai of Washington University in St. Louis teases out how changes in implicit bias do — and do not — appear to lead to changes in behavior. And why that might be.

Clarissa Rile Hayward of Washington University in St. Louis is part of a new, all-women, racially and ethnically diverse editorial team that will lead her discipline’s flagship journal, the American Political Science Review (APSR). The American Political Science Association’s announcement of the new team comes at a time when diverse voices are underrepresented in both the authorship and editorship of many academic journals.

Researchers from Arts & Sciences have solved the X-ray crystal structure of the enzyme that makes obafluorin — a broad spectrum antibiotic agent made by a fluorescent strain of soil bacteria. This new class of antibiotics might provide a powerful antidote to the growing scourge of antibiotic resistance.

Julie Bugg, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, was elected a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. 

Biologist Lucia Strader in Arts & Sciences discovered a cellular transporter that links two of the most powerful hormones in plant development — auxin and cytokinin — and shows how they regulate root initiation and progression. Understanding why and how plants make different types of root architectures can help develop plants that better cope with distinct soil conditions and environments.

In September 1969, Washington University in St. Louis scientists were among the first to receive samples collected from the historic Apollo 11 moon mission. At this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Convention, a student, a faculty member and an alum remind us of the value of these samples and share cutting edge research on decades-old rocks.

Humans have already learned much from the very first moon samples collected by the Apollo program astronauts. As NASA plans for its next manned mission by 2024, a leading lunar expert shares his science priorities for the return: “We need to learn how to live and work off Earth and beyond the low Earth orbit.”

A new study reveals much about the history of African poultry development, according to Helina S. Woldekiros, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences. But a 3,000-year-old local breed type is threatened by the introduction of commercial cluckers.

Logging road construction in Western Equatorial Africa has accelerated over the last two decades and has led to a dramatic decline of intact forest lands in the region, according to new research published by Crickette Sanz, associate professor of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences. Increased human immigration and degradation of natural resources follows in the wake of such road expansion.

Crickette Sanz, associate professor of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2019 Ai’s Scarf Award, otherwise known as the Women-in-Primatology Award. The honor was announced in Kyoto, Japan, in advance of World Chimpanzee Day July 14, a celebration of “our closest cousin in the animal kingdom.”