Research

Camilla P. Benbow, vice chair of President Bush\'s National Mathematics Advisory Panel, is available to discuss the panel\'s final report, which was presented to the president and U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings March 13. 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

Gifted black students often underachieve in school because of efforts to "act black," new research has found, offering insights into the achievement gap between black and white students in the United States and why black students are under-represented in gifted programs. 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

A computer freeze-up in the office is a hassle. In a fighter jet peppered with enemy fire, it\'s a crisis. Getting the increasingly large and complex systems people have come to rely on to interface and interact without shutting down has been the focus of engineering professor Doug Schmidt\'s career. Read More

Paying teachers based on their performance in the classroom is a trend gaining momentum across the United States. But does it work? The complex issues surrounding that question will be the topic of a national conference, "Performance Incentives: Their Growing Impact on American K-12 Education," hosted by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University Feb. 28-29. 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

Motivating and challenging gifted students in the classroom will be the focus of a free public lecture Feb. 6 at 6:30 p.m. at the downtown Nashville Public Library, located at 615 Church St. Free parking is available at the library. Read More

Kids may roll their eyes when their mother asks them about their school day, but answering her may actually help them learn. New research from Vanderbilt University reveals that children learn the solution to a problem best when they explain it to their mom. Read More

Handwriting might be a lost art to many, but it plays a critical role in how we learn and express ourselves, Vanderbilt handwriting expert Steve Graham says. Jan. 23 is National Handwriting Day. 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 series of musical performances, panel discussions, the release of a double CD of religious music and a conference to sum it all up will mark a semester-long investigation of "God in Music City" at Vanderbilt University. Read More

A new book co-authored by Vanderbilt University education faculty seeks to reverse the downward trend in the quality of student writing. Powerful Writing Strategies for All Students presents a detailed program that teachers can use to help students master writing and improve their self-confidence. 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

U.S. Courts have decreed that the federal government must come up with a system for managing nuclear wastes that will ensure the safety of the public and environment for one million years, a period that is 200 times the length of recorded history. 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

Property rights play a pivotal role in fashioning American constitutional order. New research by renowned legal historian and Vanderbilt professor of law and history James W. Ely Jr. traces the historical relationship between private property ownership and political liberty. Read More

The Vanderbilt School of Engineering will soon have a new state-of-the-art biodiesel testing facility, thanks to a $100,000 gift from the DENSO North America Foundation. Read More