Life, Earth And Space

Fecal transplants are increasingly being used to treat certain human illnesses and more scientists have begun to research the transplants' effects in animals. Read More

A team of Vanderbilt scientists have identified some of the methods that mutant mitochondrial DNA use to circumvent the molecular mechanisms that cells use to regulate mitochondrial activity. Read More

Sidney Fleischer, a renowned molecular biologist famous internationally for his work on calcium and the discovery of the ryanodine receptor, was remembered as a “true giant” in his field who worked along with his wife to advance the field of cell signaling. He died May 27 at the age of 86. Read More

Vanderbilt Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Kelly Holley-Bockelmann explains the meaning of the first discovery of gravitational waves at TEDx Nashville. Read More

The first study to systematically measure the number of neurons in the brains of birds has found that they have significantly more neurons packed into their small brains than are stuffed into mammalian and even primate brains of the same mass. Read More

The Pew Charitable Trusts has named Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences and Biochemistry Lauren Parker Jackson as a member of its 2016 class of Pew biomedical scholars. Read More

The provisional name for the newly discovered superheavy element 117 is "tennessine." The name was proposed by Vanderbilt nuclear physicist Joseph Hamilton to honor the state where three members of the international collaboration that made the discovery -- Vanderbilt University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee at Knoxville -- are located. Read More

Vanderbilt biologist Kenneth Catania has accidentally discovered that electric eels can make leaping attacks that dramatically increase the strength of the electric shocks they deliver. In doing so, Catania has confirmed a 200-year-old observation by famous 19th-century explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Read More

High school students performing advanced research at Vanderbilt have the opportunity to share their findings with the scientific community through a journal of their own. Read More

Thirteen interdisciplinary projects, ranging from cellular processes and smart cities to global health care issues, have been selected as the 2016 awardees of the Trans-Institutional Program (TIPs) initiative. Read More

The Fisk-Vanderbilt Master's-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program, which supports minority STEM graduate students, is the subject of a feature story in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read More

Observational astrophysicist Jedidah Isler, a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt, has been selected as a member of the National Geographic Society's inaugural class of Emerging Explorers. Read More

The results of a new study make it far less likely that KIC 8462852, popularly known as Tabby’s star, is the home of industrious aliens who are gradually enclosing it in a vast shell called a Dyson sphere, a theory that went viral over the past year. Read More

A team of neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University has taken an important step toward uncovering the mystery behind the California sea lion's prodigious intelligence by conducting the first comprehensive study of their central nervous systems. Read More

Visitors will have the unusual opportunity to safely view the planet Mercury as it transits directly across the face of the sun using Dyer Observatory’s solar telescopes. Read More

Three Vanderbilt students have been recognized in this year’s Goldwater Scholars competition. Marie Armbruster and Jarrod Shilts have been selected as Goldwater Scholars, and Sirui Ma has been awarded an honorable mention. Read More

An astrophysicist and an aerospace engineer who are members of the team developing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018 – will give a free public lecture March 31. Read More

Vanderbilt graduate students demonstrated that they can summarize their 80,000-word theses in less than three minutes using terms that members of the public can understand during this year's Three Minute Thesis competition. Read More

Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology at Columbia University, will address age-old questions such as "Are we alone?" and "Where do we come from?" in a free public lecture titled "Astrobiology: The Science of Life in the Universe" March 3. Read More

Astronomers have discovered an unnamed pair of stars that sets a new record for both the longest duration stellar eclipse (3.5 years) and longest period between eclipses (69 years) in a binary system. Read More