Life, Earth And Space

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

Vanderbilt physicist David Ernst played a key role in a new agreement designed to encourage minority students to pursue science careers by giving them easier access to top physics journals. Read More

When you check into a hospital, the odds are one in ten that you will become infected with a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria as a result of your stay. That is because the problem of drug-resistance has become endemic in today\'s hospitals despite the best efforts of the medical profession. In the United States alone this currently causes about 100,000 deaths per year. Read More

Shrews are tiny mammals that have been widely characterized as simple and primitive. This traditional view is challenged by a new study of the hunting methods of an aquatic member of the species, the water shrew. Read More

If the latest simulation of what happens when black holes merge is correct, there could be hundreds of rogue black holes, each weighing several thousand times the mass of the sun, roaming around the Milky Way galaxy. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt researchers has demonstrated for the first time that a new type of gene therapy, called RNA interference, can heal a genetic disorder in a live animal. Read More

It‘s a rare case of all light and no heat: A new study reports that a laser can be used to switch a film of vanadium dioxide back and forth between reflective and transparent states without heating or cooling it. Read More

There is a new twist on the question of how biological clocks work. In recent years, scientists have discovered that biological clocks help organize a dizzying array of biochemical processes in the body. Despite a number of hypotheses, exactly how the microscopic pacemakers in every cell in the body exert such a widespread influence has remained a mystery. Read More

Vanderbilt‘s Writing Studio will host a public lecture by Sally Adee, a science writer who lives in Baltimore, Md., and specializes in reporting on geology, solid-state physics, nuclear energy and defense technology. Read More

Two Vanderbilt faculty members ñ Peter T. Cummings and Ellen H. Fanning ñ have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon them by their peers. Read More

Lasers are at the cutting edge of surgery. From cosmetic to brain surgery, intense beams of coherent light are gradually replacing the steel scalpel for many procedures. Read More

There are two aspects to creating an effective drug: finding a chemical compound that has the desired biological effect and minimal side-effects and then delivering it to the right place in the body for it to do its job. Read More

Dramatic daily variations in the cockroach's learning ability were discovered by a new study performed by Vanderbilt University biologists and published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read More

When biological molecules kiss, a new kind of biosensor can tell. A new and deceptively simple technique has been developed by chemists at Vanderbilt University that can measure the interactions between free-floating, unlabeled biological molecules including proteins, sugars, antibodies, DNA and RNA. Read More

For several months last spring, the Vanderbilt greenhouse held more members of a rare species of native sunflower than are known to exist in the wild. Read More

By mapping a specialized sensory organ that the malaria mosquito uses to zero in on its human prey, an international team of researchers has taken an important step toward developing new and improved repellants and attractants that can be used to reduce the threat of malaria, generally considered the most prevalent life-threatening disease in the world. Read More

In a way, nanotubes are nature's smallest candles. These tiny tubes are constructed from carbon atoms and they are so small that it takes about 100,000 laid side-by-side to span the width of a single human hair. Read More

Fast forward to a civilization about three trillion years in the future. Astronomers at that time equipped with instruments equal to those of today would likely come to a much different conclusion about the basic nature of the universe, one that harks back to static models that were popular at the turn of the century. Read More

If you've ever wondered about the ultimate fate of the universe, Lawrence Krauss and Robert Scherrer have some good news...sort of. Read More

A new Vanderbilt University study has identified a chemical signal that plays a critical role in forming the heart, which could lead to new strategies to combat congenital heart defects. Read More