Edward M. Marcotte is looking for drugs that can kill tumors by stopping blood vessel growth, and he and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin recently found some good targets — five human genes that are essential for that growth. Now they’re hunting for drugs that can stop those genes from working. Strangely, though, Dr. Marcotte...
Microbiology undergraduates Sami Miller and Kelly Broussard traveled to Brownsville to research tuberculosis alongside the world’s foremost disease detectives, Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch. Upon arrival, Miller and Broussard’s research shifted focus to confront the global emergence of the H1N1 strain of influenza. By Christopher Palmer
Parrish Brady and Molly Cummings found that a Southwestern scarab beetle can perceive circular polarized light, one of only two species known to be able to do so. More on Nature.com and The American Naturalist.
Rival colonies of bacteria can produce a lethal chemical that keeps competitors at bay, scientists report. By halting the growth of nearby colonies and even killing some of the cells, groups of bacteria preserve scarce resources for themselves, even when the encroaching colony is closely related. Read the full story.
Scientists have designed a system that would use fusion to eliminate virtually all the waste produced by civil nuclear reactors. Swadesh Mahajan, senior research scientist at the Institute for Fusion Studies (IFS), believes that the invention could hugely reduce the need for geological repositories for waste. Read the full story at The Times.
Researchers have identified a possible mechanism by which DNA regions that don't encode proteins can still determine phenotypic traits such as a person's height or susceptibility to a particular disease, researchers report online in Science today. Read more.
If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address? Prof. Vitaly Shmatikov's research featured in this story on privacy.
An April open house will mark the official launch of the Dell Pediatric Research Institute...with a total projected capacity of 28 senior faculty members, is the first of several planned UT Austin research institutes on 30 acres of land at Mueller. Read the full story.
Texas should have a colorful spring, with recent rains bringing an abundance of wildflowers and blooms already popping up, Wildflower Center experts say. Read the full story.
The Department of Computer Science is named one of the 10 hot computer science schools in this article about increasing enrollments in the field. Bruce Porter, chair of the Department of Computer Science, comments on the trend. Read more here.
Although the physiology of romantic love has not been extensively studied, scientists can trace the symptoms of deep attraction to their logical sources. "Part of the whole attraction process is strongly linked to physiological arousal as a whole," said Timothy Loving...Read the full story.
How can we save some of our most charismatic animals from extinction due to climate change? One US biologist, Camille Parmesan, has a radical suggestion: just pick them up and move them.
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