Arts & Sciences

In the Aug. 6, 2013, online edition of Chemical Science, a team of scientists describes a testbed for light-harvesting antennas, the structures that capture the sun’s light in plants and bacteria. Prototype designs built on the testbed soak up more of the sun’s spectrum and are far easier to assemble than synthetic antennas made entirely from scratch. They offer the best of both worlds, combining human synthetic ingenuity with the repertoire of robust chemical machinery selected by evolution.

A recent report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor indicates that there are significantly fewer female entrepreneurs than male entrepreneurs around the world. This is not the case, however, at Washington University in St. Louis, where more than 40 percent of successful companies started by recent graduates through the university’s business entrepreneurship courses have been founded by women.

Frédéric Moynier, PhD, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, has been named the recipient of the 2013 Hisashi Kuno award given by the American Geophysical Union. The award is given annually to recognize the scientific accomplishments of junior scientists who make outstanding contributions to the fields of volcanology, geochemistry and petrology.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis sheds light on the brain mechanisms that underlie a type of memory, known as prospective memory, revealing two distinct processes that support our ability to remember to remember.

Washington University students still can enroll in one of the 11 online courses being offered this fall through Semester Online, a consortium of top peer universities. Students have until Aug. 26 to register. Courses include a live weekly class plus pre-produced online content that engages students, such as guest interviews and panel discussions.

Bacteria adjust to wide fluctuations in food supply by controlling how big they get and how often they divide. Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have just worked out the control system E. coli use to delay division so they can bulk up when food suddently becomes abundant. What can be delayed can also be stopped, so the control system may provide an opportunity to design a new class of antibiotics.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis offers compelling evidence that a well-connected core brain network based in the lateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietal cortex — parts of the brain most changed evolutionarily since our common ancestor with chimpanzees — contains “flexible hubs” that coordinate the brain’s responses to novel cognitive challenges.

Kevin Hays is considered one of the globe’s best Rubik’s Cube solvers, but he’s not the only Rubik’s Cube master on the Washington University in St. Louis campus. Provost Holden Thorp also won Rubik’s Cube competitions as a teenager.

In June, a rover named Zoe set out into the Atacama Desert on the west coast of South America to test a suite of instruments intended for future missions to Mars under Mars-like conditions. One of the instruments aboard Zoe was a Raman spectrometer designed by a team led by Alian Wang of Washington University in St. Louis. A fragile lab instrument that was ruggidized to survive the desert, the Raman spectrometer is expected to fly on the 2020 Mars mission.

Some social amoebae farm the bacteria they eat. Now a collaboration of scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and Harvard University has taken a closer look at one lineage, or clone, of  D. discoideum farmer. This farmer carries not one but two strains of bacteria. One strain is the “seed corn” for a crop of edible bacteria, and the other strain is a weapon that produces defensive chemicals. The edible bacteria, the scientists found, evolved from the toxic one.