Research

Peter Hedera, M.D. Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP), a group of progressive neurodegenerative disorders that impairs the ability to walk, can be caused by mutations in more than 40 different genes. Despite this genetic heterogeneity, the pathologic features – degeneration of long axons in the spinal cord – are relatively uniform,… 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… Read More

Caving expert John Hickman, who accompanies Bachmann on his underground expeditions, rappels down to the entrance of the Snail Shell Cave near Murfreesboro, Tenn Have you ever had the feeling that events beyond your control are working in your favor? That certainly seems to have been the case in the… Read More

The latest news about discoveries by Vanderbilt researchers is now available on a new online news channel, Research News @ Vanderbilt. Read More

School for Science and Math students Katie Roland, left, who attends Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet School, and Isaiah Bolden, who attends Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School, with the School for Science and Math’s director, Angela Eeds, Ph.D. (Mary Donaldson / Vanderbilt University) Report after report, it… Read More

Every few months, chemist Brian Bachmann sheds his white lab coat, collects his flashlight, helmet, surgical gloves and knotted rope, puts on old clothes and hiking boots and heads to a nearby cave. Bachmann, an assistant professor of chemistry at Vanderbilt, has combined his industrial experience in… Read More

Members of the Vanderbilt Trauma Survivors Network discuss the impact of traumatic brain injury at a recent peer panel discussion. (Photo by Mary Donaldson) Using Vanderbilt University’s Trauma Care Center as a case study, Owen Graduate School of Management professor Nancy Lea Hyer asks how operations management… Read More

Jonathan Haines and his colleagues at Vanderbilt are part of a global collaboration to discover and map all genes relating to Alzheimer's disease. (Daniel Dubois / Vanderbilt University) Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and across the globe, announced today a multi-national collaboration to discover and map all genes relating… Read More

David Gius, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues are studying an aging-associated protein’s role in the development of breast cancer in older women. (Vanderbilt University/photo by Mary Donaldson) The most common type of breast cancer in older women – estrogen and progesterone receptor (ER/PR) positive breast cancer – has been linked to… Read More

Physicist James Dickerson, left, and graduate student Saad Hasan (Photo by Daniel Dubois) Windshields that shed water so effectively that they don’t need wipers.  Ship hulls so slippery that they glide through the water more efficiently than ordinary hulls. These are some of the potential applications for graphene, one of… Read More

(Photo credit: iStock photo) Breast cancer patients who have a strong social support system in the first year after diagnosis are less likely to die or have a recurrence of cancer, according to new research from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and the Shanghai Institute of Preventive Medicine. The study, led… Read More

Left to right: Karen Gregory, Elizabeth Hammock, Peilin Jia, John Panos Eight Vanderbilt University scientists have won 2010 Young Investigator Awards from NARSAD, the world’s leading mental health research charity. Each scientist will receive up to $60,000 over two years for innovative brain and behavioral studies of serious psychiatric disorders. Read More

(iStock Photo) Individuals with schizophrenia are better at some cognitive tasks than average people, new research from Vanderbilt University indicates. The findings open the door for potential new therapies for these individuals. Katy Thakkar and Sohee Park (Mary Donaldson/Vanderbilt University) “We found a pocket of spared or enhanced ability in… Read More

Bringing a new drug to market is an increasingly daunting – and expensive – task. Today it costs more than $1 billion and takes more than seven years, on average, to complete the human studies required for a drug to be approved for marketing. Only about one in five drugs… 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 Vanderbilt University sociologist Andre Christie-Mizell. “Our behavior is driven by our perception of our world, so if children feel they… Read More

Charter schools and mayoral control are both hot topics in education reform.  Indiana combined these reform strategies when enacting a new charter school law in 2001.  Under the law, the mayor of Indianapolis was granted authorizing authority to charter schools in the Indianapolis Public Schools district, as well as 10… Read More

The number trillion has popped up in the news several times in recent weeks. On January 11, for example, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III – a scientific consortium that includes Vanderbilt – announced that it had created the largest digital image of the sky and is releasing it to… Read More

Seven years ago this month, I was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, with a contingent of Vanderbilt University AIDS researchers and health care professionals. That was before the earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak riveted international attention once again on this, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Yet hope endures, even in… Read More

Health care reform will likely remain a hot-button issue through the 2012 election. But while the pros and cons of last year’s health reform legislation are debated in Congress and on the campaign trail, considerable efforts are underway at the grassroots level to redesign the way health care is delivered… Read More

Nathan Roberts, an 18-month-old patient from Snead, Ala., whose heart has been operating with the help of a mechanical assistance device called the Berlin Heart since May 27, 2010, received a donor heart early yesterday morning at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Doctors say the transplant surgery went… Read More