Featured Research

A microscopic analysis of quartz crystals from an ancient California super-eruption indicates that the process of decompression preceding the eruption took place less than a year before. Read More

The major stock exchanges need new methods of regulation because of "dark pools," trading platforms that allow trades to remain private for a short while, says Vanderbilt finance expert Yesha Yadav. Read More

Five biomedical engineering professors and an electrical engineering and computer science professor are celebrating news about newly approved or resubmitted Research Project Grants (R01) from the Nationals Institutes of Health. Read More

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

People with Alzheimer’s disease don’t perceive pain as readily as healthy older adults, and this may lead to delays and underreporting of pain. This alteration in pain detection may be one reason that people with Alzheimer’s disease and pain tend to be undermedicated and suffer unnecessarily, a trans-institutional group of Vanderbilt researchers reported recently in BMC Medicine. Read More

Psychiatrists usually treat marriage troubles by prescribing drugs meant for depression, a new study from Vanderbilt University shows. Read More

Stimulating the brain with a mild electrical current can temporarily sharpen vision without glasses or contacts, Vanderbilt University researchers have found. (But please don't try this at home.) Read More

Election outcomes depend far less on voters' opinions on policy and the incumbents than we thought. What does matter? Weather. Read More

Forty-one states earn a "D" or "F" when it comes to how well their courts reflect the race, ethnicity and gender of the people they serve. Read More

For women with low-wage jobs, a lack of childcare can be more harmful to their mental health than unemployment. Read More

Millennials have emerged as the largest age cohort in today’s U.S. workforce, bringing digital savvy and an "always-on" mentality to most jobs. Yet, millennials and the upcoming Generation Z are also challenging traditional employers with their professional restlessness and increased need for feedback and mentoring. 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 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

There’s a stark and troubling way that incarceration may diminish the ability of a former inmate to empathize with a loved one behind bars, but existing sociological theories fail to capture it. 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

New first-of-its-kind research from two Vanderbilt Law School economists contradicts conventional wisdom and finds a female applicant strongly raises her chances of getting hired if she gives personal information clarifying her resume gaps. 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