Category: Published Science Articles

For gardeners, a trip to the local garden center in the spring is as tempting as a visit to the candy store.  How do you choose between your old favorites and all the gorgeous new varieties?  And aren’t there lots more new plants every year than you found twenty years ago?

Yes, there are indeed many more choices today than in the past.  This explosion is due to both the impact of technology and the globalization of the gardening industry.

Developing, growing and marketing new varieties for gardens is big business.  According to Bruce Butterfield of the National Gardening Association, about one in three American households (36 million) participate in flower gardening.  These households spend $2.3 billion on flowers and their care. In addition, parks, municipalities and businesses now maintain floral displays.  This country is in a veritable blooming boom.

And of course the suppliers of plants are anxious to be the ones to market the next big thing.  According to St. Louisan Bill Ruppert of National Nursery Products, you may be tempted next year by a black petunia.  And here in the Midwest, garden centers will be featuring the annual Angelonia, a snapdragon-like flower that loves heat.
Continue reading How does your garden grow? With lots of new varieties, thanks to technology and globalization

Because she is driven by a belief that everyone—including those with injuries and disabilities— should live a full life, Carolyn Baum has overseen the transformation of occupational therapy from a clinical specialty into a true science.

Patients getting rehab in the program she directs at Washington University School of Medicine might have their range of motion measured in 3-D before and after therapy.  And the therapy might include playing a video game similar to “Space Invaders” with an adapted Wii.  They will certainly be assessed with a number of tools she and colleagues have developed that build upon what the patient can do so that they can, as she puts it, “live their lives.”

 

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This article was originally published in the St. Louis Beacon.

“How do you milk algae for their oil?  Tiny milkmaids with very tiny tweezers.”

Dr. Richard Sayre, head of the Enterprise Biofuels Insitute at the Danforth Plant Biology Center has a whole comedy shtick to ease the listener into the serious topic of algae’s oil eventually becoming a major source of transportation and other fuels.  His laboratory has devised a system to extract the oil (up to 50% of their weight) from algae without damaging them, so that the same organism can replenish its oil droplets again and again.

As the country scrambles to find economical substitutes for fossil fuels, the algae most of us think of as “pond scum” have emerged as a potentially major source of raw materials.  And when it comes to research on these one-celled organisms, St. Louis has become a key center for basic research.  Last year, both of the Department of Energy’s main grants for algae research were granted to St. Louis institutions; $15 million went to the Danforth Center, and $20 million to Washington University.

In addition, $44 million in ‘stimulus’ funds plus an additional $16 million from industry is being used to establish the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts  (NAABB), a consortium of 24 companies, universities and national laboratories whose goal is to make fuel and other bioproducts from algae commercially viable as quickly as possible.  The Danforth Center heads the consortium, with Sayre as lead scientist and Dr. Jose Olivares as executive director.  The aim is to explore different approaches to solving problems, and then to develop the most promising ones. For example, ‘milking algae’ by the process to be described later in this article will be evaluated against other approaches to growing algae and harvesting their oil.

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This article was originally published in the St. Louis Beacon.

This is a tale of the city goose and the country goose.

Many of us become aware of the city goose as we begin to enjoy the spring weather in our favorite local park.  The city goose—AKA the Canada goose—has become a nuisance in many urban green spaces.

The country goose — aka the snow goose — minds his own business. For us, these geese are mostly out of sight and out of mind as they pass through in the late winter and early spring. But they have become a threat to the Arctic environment where they hatch their goslings.

 

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This article was originally published in the St. Louis Beacon.

The excitement was palpable when four Washington U. faculty members got together to explain just why it is so important to go back to the Moon and gather new rocks to analyze.

“The Moon is like a storage locker of early solar system history,” explained Paul Carpenter, director of the microprobe laboratory in Earth Sciences. “The youngest rock on the Moon is older than almost all the rocks on Earth.”

Professors Brad Jolliff and Randy Korotev elaborated. “The Earth is an active planet, with plate tectonics, mountains, oceans, and volcanos—things are always changing.  But the Moon has been sitting there like a ‘witness plate’ for 4.5 billion years, being acted upon. If you look at the Moon and realize that all those craters have resulted from collisions with other bodies, and if you consider the common origin of the Earth and its Moon, you must conclude that the young Earth was similarly bombarded. “

 

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This article was originally published in the St. Louis Beacon.