Arts & Sciences

A new degree, the bachelor of science in sustainability, that provides an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and resolving today’s most pressing and complex environmental, economic and social challenges, has been developed at University College, the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences. The program, which will be offered beginning with the start of the semester Aug. 31, treats sustainable living from multiple perspectives — scientific, political, economic, social, historical, philosophical, anthropological and literary. 

Scientists have sequenced the genome of the colonial alga, Volvox carteri, the journal Science announced. While the photosynthesizing colonial algae is fascinating in itself, knowing its genome may also help scientists engineer algae able to produce economic biofuels.

Archeobotanists argue that plant domestication involved much trial and error in many different geographic regions over a long period of time. A genetic technique that allows domesticated and wild strains of the same plant to be compared shows that domestication requires only simple genetic changes. Yet the findings don’t contradict the archeobotanical data.  

Liviu Mirica, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, and Yinjie Tang, PhD, assistant professor of chemical engineering, receive Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Achievement Awards on June 14 from Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not simply a random accident. There will be more of these spills to come, as the days of easy oil are over, says an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

The U.S. Senate lost one of its staunchest defenders and most influential leaders with the death Monday, June 28, of long-serving Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. “The death of Robert Byrd is important,” says Steven S. Smith, a congressional expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “He was first and foremost a senator. He loved the Senate and was the strongest defender of its traditions.”

It’s no secret that Americans tend to throw their support behind a sitting U.S. president when the nation is thrust into a war or other potentially violent conflict with a foreign foe. But new research from Washington University in St. Louis is the first to show that these “rally effects” represent a collective reaction to a specific human emotion – anger.

Friends and colleagues of Owen Sexton, PhD (right), professor emeritus of biology in Arts & Sciences and former director of Tyson Research Center, joined him June 17 at the facility to thank him for his mentorship and for advocating the purchase of the research center, WUSTL’s 2,000-acre field station in the Ozark foothills 20 miles outside of St. Louis.

Scientists once thought the fertilization effect of rising carbon dioxide concentrations would offset factors such as higher temperatures or drier soils that would reduce crops yields. This view is turning out to be overly optimistic. A new study shows that soybeans switch into unproductive metabolic activity at higher carbon dioxide concentrations. The invasive cheatgrass, on the other hand, has no switch, or control, and continues to efficiently transport water and assimilate carbon. Crop plants might need to be equipped with similar traits to survive future arid high-carbon dioxide environments.

When it comes to executing items on tomorrow’s to-do list, it’s best to think it over, then “sleep on it,” say psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers have shown that sleep enhances our ability to remember to do something in the future, a skill known as prospective memory.