Life, Earth And Space

Jason Martin, a fellow in allergy, pulmonary and critical care medicine, is part of an interdisciplinary team at Vanderbilt University that has come up with a high-tech approach to combat this deadly illness, which is one of the top 10 causes of death in the United States and kills more than half a million people worldwide every year. Read More

A team of synthetic chemists at Vanderbilt University report in the March 18 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society that they have created an efficient way to make a naturally occurring alkaloid that could have anti-cancer properties and may combat memory loss from scratch. Read More

Jesse Peterson, assistant professor of mathematics at Vanderbilt University, has won a $50,000 research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation aimed at encouraging promising young scholars. Read More

Ellen H. Fanning, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, has received a 2009 Humboldt Research Award. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt scientists have invented the world's smallest version of the periscope and are using it to look at cells and other micro-organisms from several sides at once. Read More

Brandt F. Eichman, assistant professor of biological sciences and biochemistry at Vanderbilt University, has received Sigma Xi's Young Investigator Award. Read More

Thomas J. Weiler, professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University, has received a 2009 Humboldt Research Award. The award is granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany for the purpose of encouraging research collaborations between German scientists and colleagues in other countries. Read More

Four Vanderbilt faculty members – Daniel Liebler, Charles Sanders, Gary Sulikowski and Michael Waterman – have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon them by their peers. Read More

A detailed analysis of the measurements of five different satellites have revealed the existence of the warm plasma cloak, a new region of the magnetosphere, which is the invisible shield of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surround and protect Earth from the onslaught of the solar wind. Read More

When biologist Ken Catania heard about the peculiar practice of worm grunting practiced in the Apalachicola National Forest in the Florida Panhandle, one of his first thoughts was an observation made by Charles Darwin. Read More

What does a mixture of two different kinds of cells have in common with a mixture of oil and water? The same basic force causes both mixtures to separate into two distinct regions. Read More

An interdisciplinary group of scientists has obtained the first detailed information about the structure of the most destructive group of plant viruses known: flexible filamentous viruses. Read More

Scientists have detected previously unnoticed chemical signals that individual cells in the immune system use to communicate with each other over short distances. Read More

"Global Warming – What do we know and what we should do?" is the title of a free public lecture that will be given Thursday afternoon, Sept. 4, on the Vanderbilt University campus. Read More

The analysis of the youngest pair of identical twin stars yet discovered has revealed surprising differences in brightness, surface temperature and possibly even the size of the two. The study, which is published in the June 19 issue of the journal Nature, suggests that one of the stars formed significantly earlier than its twin. Read More

Vanderbilt astronomers have constructed a special-purpose telescope that will allow them to participate in one of the hottest areas in astronomy-- the hunt for earthlike planets circling other stars. Read More

Shape matters, even in hearing. Read More

A new method that uses nanotechnology to rapidly measure minute amounts of insulin is a major step toward developing the ability to assess the health of the body\'s insulin-producing cells in real time. Read More

Nobel laureate George F. Smoot from the University of California, Berkeley will give a free public lecture about what the latest studies of the variations in fossil radiation called the cosmic background radiation (CBR) are revealing about the nature of the embryonic universe shortly after its origin in the Big Bang. Read More

Exploding stars and black holes. Colliding galaxies and dark matter. Dark energy and cosmic inflation. The universe that modern science has revealed is strange and wild and beautiful, but doesn\'t seem particularly hospitable to life or very comprehensible. Read More