Science

Vanderbilt\'s Dyer Observatory is open to the public at least once a month starting in March for either a free Open House Telescope Night or an Exploration Night. Reservations are required for Exploration Nights and there is a $5/person, $10/family fee. Read More

In the space of only five weeks, three Nobel Prize-winning physicists will visit the Vanderbilt campus and provide local researchers with updates on the latest developments in fields ranging from cosmology to the behavior of atoms to science education. Two of the three will also give free public lectures while they are here. 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

Energy, environment, economy and security: never before has society been so acutely aware of the links between these issues. On April 10, Michelle V. Buchanan, associate laboratory director for physical sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will address these links in a lecture titled "Grand Scientific Challenges in Energy." 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

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

Crossbow Inc., a leading provider of wireless sensor network platforms, has given a research program at Vanderbilt\'s Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) a gift of $50,000 to help advance the state of the art in wireless sensor networks (WSN). Read More

Tennessee\'s first-ever Food Security Summit will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Feb. 16, at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Nashville. Mayor Karl Dean will address the expected crowd of over 250 farmers, chefs, retailers, health and service providers, gardeners and interested citizens at 10 a.m. Read More

John P. Wikswo, Gordon A. Cain University Professor and professor of biomedical engineering, has been named a Fellow of the IEEE (originally the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). 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 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

Watch video of the Dec. 5 Thinking Out of the Lunch Box lecture with Assistant Professor of Astronomy Keivan Stassun at the downtown Nashville Public Library. 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

There is a new twist on the question of how biological clocks work. In recent years, scientists have discovered that biological clocks help organize a dizzying array of biochemical processes in the body. Despite a number of hypotheses, exactly how the microscopic pacemakers in every cell in the body exert such a widespread influence has remained a mystery. Read More

Thomas A. Cruse, the H. Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon him by his peers. Read More

Vanderbilt‘s Writing Studio will host a public lecture by Sally Adee, a science writer who lives in Baltimore, Md., and specializes in reporting on geology, solid-state physics, nuclear energy and defense technology. Read More

Two Vanderbilt faculty members ñ Peter T. Cummings and Ellen H. Fanning ñ have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon them by their peers. Read More

Lasers are at the cutting edge of surgery. From cosmetic to brain surgery, intense beams of coherent light are gradually replacing the steel scalpel for many procedures. Read More

Dyer Observatory is offering two opportunities for the public astronomers and aspiring young scientists to pay tribute to the 150th birthday of Nashville's own Edward Emerson Barnard, one of the leading astronomers of the 19th century. Read More