Bright Ideas

With the official end of the U.S. war in Iraq and the return home of thousands of service members, Vanderbilt researchers are working with the Department of Defense to ensure mental health concerns associated with deployments are not overlooked. Faculty and staff of Vanderbilt School of Medicine are conducting workshops… Read More

A report released by the Institute of Medicine last September confirms the safety of eight vaccines studied by a committee of experts convened in 2009 to review epidemiological, clinical and biological evidence regarding adverse health events. The committee—chaired by Vanderbilt’s Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, the Craig–Weaver Chair in Pediatrics, professor… Read More

One factor will go a long way toward determining whether President Obama—or any incumbent president—is re-elected, claims a Vanderbilt political scientist. Here it is: If the real disposable incomes of voters are growing—even modestly—in the six months before Election Day, Obama is likely to win. If they aren’t, he is… Read More

Engineering professor Sankaran Mahadevan and his colleagues develop computer models that can predict whether complex structures and systems will fail, when failure is likely to occur, and how to prevent such failure. When you take a plane trip, drive across a bridge, or ride the commuter train to work, you… Read More

The struggle against juvenile crime may come down to one simple question: Do we want revenge, or do we want results? If we want results, says Christopher Slobogin, the Milton Underwood Professor of Law at Vanderbilt, we should reform the system dramatically to stress community-based treatment over incarceration. “The bottom… Read More

Bacteria can influence the sexual behavior of their Nasonia hosts.Like all species of animals and plants, we humans are unwitting hosts to our own set of bacterial travelers. We carry thousands of different species of microbes, which scientists refer to as “the human microbiome.” In fact, only one among every… Read More

Qian Vermund Vanderbilt researchers are partnering with the Chinese government and a large volunteer organization to test combination methods for reducing the spread of HIV—the AIDS virus—among gay men in China. Thirty years into the global HIV pandemic, it is apparent that no single strategy will stop the spread… Read More

Try asking any Monday morning quarterback about blown fourth-down play calls in the NFL and you are guaranteed passionate opinions. In most fourth-down plays, an NFL team will punt or try for a field goal. But occasionally, teams decide to do something that is viewed as risky: attempt a fourth-down… Read More

Millions of 13-year cicadas emerged in Nashville in May, emitting sound levels at 85 to 88 decibels and clogging up cooling systems all over campus.And on the subject of bugs—Nashville’s largest brood of cicadas emerged in May and hung around for five or six weeks, blanketing the campus like thousands… Read More

Targets for a new class of insect repellent could include backyard bugs and agricultural pests, says researcher Patrick Jones. Imagine an insect repellent that not only is thousands of times more effective than DEET—the active ingredient in most commercial mosquito repellents—but also works against all types of insects, including… Read More

Do your children think you work too much and don’t spend enough time with them? If so, their perception could lead to bullying behavior, according to research by sociologist Andre Christie-Mizell. “Our behavior is driven by our perception of our world, so if children feel they are not getting enough… Read More

Ciarleglio (left) and McMahon The season in which babies are born can have a dramatic and persistent effect on how their biological clocks function. That is the conclusion of a study offering the first evidence for seasonal imprinting of biological clocks in mammals. The research was conducted by Professor of… Read More

As hedge funds come under tighter scrutiny, Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management professor Nicolas Bollen has identified several that could pose a fraud risk similar to the kind undertaken by Bernie Madoff, who bilked investors out of $65 billion. In a study examining the effectiveness of five performance flags… Read More

After more than 15 years of treating movement disorders with deep brain stimulation, Vanderbilt is offering the procedure to patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). “In movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease, there is an imbalance in the brain’s motor system. The cognitive circuit is a mirror of the motor circuit, and… Read More

Physicist James Dickerson (left) is one of the first scientists to probe graphene’s interaction with water. Pictured with him is graduate student Saad Hasan. Windshields that shed water so effectively they don’t need wipers. Ship hulls so slippery that they glide through water more efficiently than ordinary hulls. These are… Read More

A collaboration between Vanderbilt and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools on an Early Reading First project for preschool children has yielded “spectacular” results in a preliminary study, according to project leaders. “The big picture is that high-quality language and literacy instruction in pre-K can make a big difference,” says Deborah Rowe,… Read More

In this corner, weighing in at 150 pounds: Homo sapiens, creator of the bug zapper, the citronella candle, the rolled-up newspaper and Deep Woods Off! And in the opposite corner, weighing in at less than 5 milligrams: Anopheles gambiae, transmitter of 250 million new cases of malaria each year, possessing… Read More

U.S. health care exacts a heavy toll not only in terms of dollars, but also in the demand we exert on the world’s supply of surgeons. A decline in the number of international medical graduates practicing general surgery in the United States is contributing to a “crisis of urgency” as… Read More

Hearing loss now affects nearly 20 percent of U.S. adolescents age 12 to 19, a rise of 5 percent during the past 15 years, according to a new Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study co-led by Dr. Ron Eavey, director of the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center and the… Read More

Between 2003 and 2005, Vanderbilt physicians treated more than 50 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division based in Fort Campbell, Ky., with a common complaint. Each soldier had a history of shortness of breath, and each one—a former supremely fit soldier—was having trouble passing a running test. They also shared… Read More