Author: Diana Lutz

Frequent measurement of a quantum system’s state can either speed or delay its collapse, effects called the quantum Zeno and quantum anti-Zeno effect. But so too can “quasimeasurements” that only poke the system and garner no information about its state.

Using genomics, a chemistry lab has worked out the biosynthetic machinery that makes a new class of antibiotic compounds called the beta-lactones. Like the beta-lactams, such as penicillin, they have an unstable four-member ring. The key to their antibiotic activity, it is also difficult to synthesize.

The discovery of anomalously high levels of mercury in rocks from the Ordivician geological period has led to a new interpretation of the ensuing mass extinction. A sequence of disturbances may have led to catastrophic cooling by reflective sulfate aerosols injected into the atmosphere by massive volcanism. The finding is important since aerosol cooling is under consideration as a way to temper global warming.

Three juniors at Washington University in St. Louis have been awarded the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for the 2017-18 academic year. They are Emily Goering and Hannah Olsen, who are majoring in biochemistry, and Emma Streff, who is studying chemistry.

Ten Washington University scientists were each given one minute to explain why they’re scientists. This is what they said.

Douglas Wiens was installed as the Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences at a ceremony held Feb. 21 in Holmes Lounge at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the second faculty member to hold this professorship, which was established in 2006.

Saturday, April 15, Washington University students studying neuroscience will be sharing brainy demonstrations they have developed just for kids at the Amazing Brain Carnival, the featured activity at the St. Louis Science Center’s SciFest: Brain Matters.

The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) has named Washington University in St. Louis’ Richard Vierstra a fellow of ASPB.

We tend to assume that domestication is a one-way street and that, once domesticated, crop plants stay domesticated. A new study of rice shows, however, that different methods of farming change the evolutionary pressures on crop plants, and the plants easily “de-domesticate,” evolving to take advantage of these opportunities.

Geologist Phil Skemer, of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is assembling a database of three-dimensional models of crystal structures, rock outcrops and landforms that will allow students to study geology in three dimensions.