WSU Research

WSU Astronomer Participates in Discovery of Early-Universe Galaxies

Hundreds of galaxies dating back nearly to the time of the Big Bang have been discovered through an analysis of the two deepest views of the cosmos ever taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The research was performed by a team of four astronomers that included John Blakeslee, an assistant professor with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Washington State University.

The researchers report finding some 500 galaxies that existed less than a billion years after the Big Bang – a time when the cosmos was less than 7 percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. Their findings constitute the most comprehensive compilation of galaxies in the early universe.

The discovery is considered a significant leap forward in developing an understanding of the origin of galaxies, given that little was known of early galaxy formation just a decade ago, when astronomers had not seen even one galaxy dating back to the first billion years of the history of the universe.

The early universe galaxies are smaller than today’s giant galaxies and quite bluish in color, indicating they are ablaze with star birth. They appear red in the Hubble images, however, because of their tremendous distance from Earth. The blue light from the galaxies’ young stars took nearly 13 billion years to reach Earth. During the long journey, their shorter wavelength blue light shifted to longer wavelength red light due to the expansion of space.

“Finding so many of these dwarf galaxies, but so few bright ones, is evidence for galaxies building up from small pieces – merging together as predicted by the hierarchical theory of galaxy formation,” said Rychard Bouwens an astronomer with the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the Hubble study.

The researchers discovered the early galaxies in an analysis of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a patch of sky observed in unprecedented depth by Hubble in 2004, and the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, begun in 2003. Their results were published recently in the “Astrophysical Journal.”

WSU Researchers Find a Key to Plant Growth

Waist-high corn stalks laden with full-size ears; squash plants that don’t sprawl over half your yard; a miniature tomato plant offering hefty red fruits to astronauts weary of freeze-dried food: these are just a few of the possibilities raised by new research at Washington State University.

Lead investigator Professor B.W. (Joe) Poovaiah and research associate Liqun Du have discovered a way to control the ultimate size of a plant. By altering a specific gene, they were able to change the size of the plant that grew from an experimental seed. Different alterations led to different size plants, showing that plants might be “size-engineered” to fit the needs of growers.

Their findings are reported in a recent issue of the prestigious journal, “Nature.” WSU has applied for a patent on the process.

Poovaiah said size-engineered plants could be a potent tool against worldwide hunger. “Dwarf plants use less water and are more resistant to wind and rain damage than normal-size plants,” he said. “They devote a greater proportion of their energy to producing seeds or fruit rather than stems and leaves.”

He compares his findings to the development, in the 1960s, of semi-dwarf wheat varieties that boosted Third World wheat production in what became known as the “Green Revolution.”

WSU Researchers Explore Consumers’ Online Buying Behavior

With U.S. consumers now spending billions of dollars online each year, researchers at WSU are discovering that retailers can add certain features to their Web sites that enhance the ‘entertainment value’ of the shopping experience, prompting an increase in ‘impulse buying’ and driving up the amount of money consumers are willing to spend.

The research comes as Web-based sales revenues hit $165 billion in 2005 – a jump of more than 20 percent from the previous year – and accounted for some three percent of the nation’s total retail sal
es during the year. Should current sales growth projections prove accurate, that percentage is expected to jump to fully ten percent of all retail sales in the U.S. within the next three years.

It’s a research emphasis at WSU’s College of Business  that is driven also by a growing realization that Web-based “storefronts,” offer a complex virtual environment in which the consumers’ level of involvement and engagement in the online experience can drive their purchasing decisions.

“We know that retail shopping malls create an environment in which the customer frequently makes spending decisions that are driven as much by their enjoyment of the shopping experience as by their need to purchase particular products,” said John Wells, a professor in the college’s Department of Information Systems. “As customers are turning more and more to the Internet to make retail purchases, one of the key questions for Web marketers has become ‘what can we do to create a similarly enjoyable shopping experience online?'”

Conducted by Wells and his colleagues, D. Veena Parboteeah and Joseph S. Valacich, the research demonstrated that certain features of the Web interface do tend to have a direct influence on the degree to which customers engage in impulsive purchases. Although the study involved only simulated purchasing decisions, the researchers discovered that particular Web features, which they call “cues,” have the potential to affect not only the frequency with which customers make impulsive purchases, but the total amount they may ultimately spend on products they had not initially intended to buy.