Life, Earth And Space

A discovery from a team of physicists and other researchers is breaking new ground in the study of ferroelectricity, a characteristic of certain dielectric materials that are used in high-technology applications. Read More

New research led by Vanderbilt astrophysicist Karan Jani presents a compelling roadmap for capturing intermediate-mass black hole activity. Read More

A National Academies committee, featuring Vanderbilt astrophysicist Keivan Stassun, published a report and resource guide on effective mentorship in the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. Read More

An astrophysicist at Vanderbilt is part of the committee behind a review of NASA’s updated Science Plan, a five-year strategic roadmap for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Read More

A new Vanderbilt study funded by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency seeks to construct a new platform and reliable approach for future studies into organophosphate compounds, such as pesticides, insecticides and similar nerve agents. Read More

When it comes to our differences from Neanderthals, most of what we know comes from comparing fossils. But fossils can only tell us about bones and not whole living organisms. That’s changing thanks to a new paper from a team of genomics researchers at Vanderbilt, who… Read More

Picky females force male songbirds to become better singers. Read More

A groundbreaking study, using data from NASA and a technique pioneered by a Vanderbilt professor, is giving humankind a glimpse at a distant exoplanet with a size similar to Earth and a surface which may resemble Mercury or Earth’s Moon. Located nearly 49 light-years from Earth, the planet known… Read More

Spreading the gospel of veggie-only diets may not be the most effective way to help reduce overall, food-related greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new model based on behavioral science. In new commentary published Aug. 9 in Nature Sustainability, Jonathan Gilligan, associate professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, examines… Read More

A computer model of forces exerted by cells during development of a fertilized egg into a fruit fly larvae holds promise to help scientists understand the morphogenesis of organisms that are much more complicated. Shane Hutson, professor of physics and biological sciences and chair of the Department of… Read More

“They are behaving like animals, and that’s a link between them and what we recognize as animals," says paleontologist Simon A.F. Darroch. Read More

A group of budding yeasts in the genus Hanseniaspora, which is closely related to the baker’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has lost large numbers of genes related to cell cycle and DNA repair processes. Read More

Louise Rollins-Smith and colleagues have discovered a new way that a deadly fungus evades frogs' immune systems. Read More

The team, one of the first in the world to examine the ability’s origins, used a small CT scanner to look inside a 30-million-year-old ear bone fossil from a specimen resembling Olympicetus avitus. Read More

The catalog identifies 1,823 stars for which TESS is sensitive enough to spot Earth-like planets just a bit larger than Earth that receive radiation from their star equivalent to what Earth receives from our sun. Read More

Stalagmite records from monsoon regions such as India are vital to understanding past variability in the global climate system and the underlying reasons for this variability. Read More

Even if animals have ulterior motives for teaming up, they teach humans a lot about love, says Vanderbilt University animal biologist Patrick Abbot. Read More

PHENIX publishes new particle-flow measurements to support their case that tiny projectiles create specks of quark-gluon plasma. Read More

This work was the foundation for an NSF grant to interrogate how the Rif1 protein controls DNA replication. Read More

James Patton and colleagues have demonstrated how colon cancer cells transmit genetic data to other cells. Read More