Research

In a long standing enigma of economics and psychology, humans tend to immediately value an item they've just received more than the maximum amount they would have paid to get it to begin with. This tendency, known as endowment effect, is something some economists consider a fluke, but new research finds that humans aren't the only ones exhibiting an endowment effect. 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

New research from Vanderbilt University and the University of Missouri-Columbia suggests that performance pay for teachers and administrators often has a positive impact on student achievement and should be explored by states and school districts. Their findings are the result of a review of six large current or planned performance-pay programs and the U.S. Department of Education's $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund implemented under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. 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

Helping African American males succeed in urban schools can seem like an intractable problem, but applying some basic principles that empower teachers and students is a key part of the answer, finds Vanderbilt University education researcher H. Richard Milner. In a new article in the journal Theory Into Practice, he argues that teachers and school leaders must move beyond making excuses to turn around failing schools. Read More

A new study led by Nancy King, Lee S. and Charles A. Speir Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University, finds that fewer state convictions and sentences are being ruled unconstitutional by federal courts. Read More

Vanderbilt University higher education experts are available for back-to-school interviews on admissions, tuition, financial aid, rankings, higher education policy and reform, immigration and higher education, and more. Read More

Combine a mechanical arm with a miniature rocket motor: The result is a prosthetic device that is the closest thing yet to a bionic arm. Read More

Eight candidates vying for four Metro Nashville council at-large seats will speak and answer questions during a forum at Vanderbilt University. Read More

Most of America's low-cost stores have much of their merchandise made in foreign countries, like China. What's become better known, because or recent news reports, are the serious safety and environmental concerns that can arise from these foreign suppliers. Read More

The United States Supreme Court is set to make decisions on a number of hotly debated cases and a diverse group of Vanderbilt University experts is ready to talk about those cases. Read More

Memos in 2002 and 2003 written by White House lawyers to President Bush effectively promoting the use of torture are shocking, but not because of faulty legal arguments, says a Vanderbilt University professor. Read More

One of the country's most successful airlines is challenging students in the Vanderbilt Accelerator Summer Business Institute to focus their creativity on an area most young people in the "Y-Generation" know better than the back of their hand, the Internet. 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

The Pentagon is not the first place to which policy makers look for ideas on increasing parental involvement in education, but they should, according to Vanderbilt University education researcher Claire Smrekar. Read More

A military judge Monday threw out a war crimes case against Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr. He is accused of the 2002 grenade killing of a U.S. Army soldier in Afghanistan. Khadr was 15 at the time of the alleged attack. Judge Peter Brownback found that the charge sheet did not meet a two-step process defined in the Military Commissions Act. 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

The Supreme Court followed the advice of a Vanderbilt University professor and 25 other top antitrust economists and overturned the decision made by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on the telecom antitrust lawsuit Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly. Read More

An employee is fired for having a political bumper sticker on his car. Another is let go for complaining about co-workers on a MySpace page. A third person didn't receive a call-back on a prospective job because of the sermon he gave on his church's podcast. Are these violations of free speech? Are private companies breaking the law by firing or not hiring these people? Read More