Science/Medicine

One of the best things the world can do to promote peace and stability in the coming century is to expand commercial nuclear power based on the extraction of uranium from the ocean. That is the proposition which Frank Parker, an internationally recognized expert in remediation of radioactively contaminated soil and water and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, advanced at an exclusive meeting held at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican last month. Read More

Vanderbilt University Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Kelly Holley-Bockelmann has been awarded the National Science Foundation's largest ever Faculty Early Career Development grant in the field of astronomy. She will use the prestigious award to continue her studies of black holes while supporting the university's innovative program designed to make the university the top producer of underrepresented minorities with Ph.D.s in physics and astronomy. Read More

First, it was the soccer-ball-shaped molecules dubbed buckyballs. Then it was the cylindrically shaped nanotubes. Now, the hottest new material in physics and nanotechnology is graphene: a remarkably flat molecule made of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings much like molecular chicken wire. Read More

Watch video of a Nov. 11 talk "The Living Dead: Ancient Ancestors and Mummies in the Pre-Incan Andes, " by Dr. Tiffiny Tung, Assistant Professor of Anthropology. Read More

With the support of a $2.7 million Recovery Act grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), an interdisciplinary team headed by Vanderbilt chemist John McLean and physicist John Wikswo will attempt to determine whether an individual's white blood cells retain chemical memories of exposure to drugs like cocaine and alcohol that can be read reliably and unambiguously. Read More

Watch video of a Nov. 5 talk by Sandra Mangus, Ph.D., NASA Astronaut, Flight Engineer and Science Officer aboard the International Space Station. Read More

Watch the Nov. 5 ribbon cutting ceremony for Vanderbilt University Medical Center's new 11-story, $169 million Critical Care Tower. Read More

Watch video of an Oct. 28 talk, "Worlds Above the Sky: Exploring the Universe with the Hubble Space Telescope," by Dr. Bob O'Dell, Distinguished Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Read More

Unnoticed by the nearby residents of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, tiny leaf beetles that flit among the maple and willow trees in the area have just provided some of the clearest evidence yet that environmental factors play a major role in the formation of new species. Read More

Vanderbilt University announced Oct. 21 that it has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project conducted by Associate Professor of Chemistry David Wright and Professor of Biomedical Engineering Rick Haselton, titled "Coffee Ring Stain Diagnostics for Malaria." Read More

Figuring out how biological clocks evolved and extracting clues to environmental factors that cause cancer from electronic medical records: These are the goals of two projects that have been funded by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) program. Read More

Watch video of an Oct. 14 talk, "Working at the Frontier: The Process and Adventure of Exploration," by Rick Chappell, research professor of physics. Read More

Since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was signed into law in February, it has given a significant boost to scientific and medical research at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Read More

Health care business leaders and experts tackle hot button issues in health care as Vanderbilt hosts the Health Care Business Alliance. Watch the Oct. 2 keynote speech by Randall Spratt, Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer of McKesson Corporation. Read More

Health care business leaders and experts tackle hot button issues in health care as Vanderbilt hosts the Health Care Business Alliance. Watch the Oct. 2 panel discussion. Read More

Antonis Rokas is a member of a small cadre of scientists who are applying the growing power of genomics to untangle and correctly arrange the branches of the tree of life. Read More

A collaboration between scientists at Vanderbilt University and the University of California, San Francisco has led to the first direct information about the molecular structure of prions. In addition, the study has revealed surprisingly large structural differences between natural prions and the closest synthetic analogs that scientists have created in the lab. Read More

The most ambitious attempt yet to trace the history of the universe has seen "first light." The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), took its first astronomical data on the night of Sept. 14-15 at the Sloan Foundation telescope in New Mexico. Read More

Concerned with the dramatic decline in the traditional media's coverage of newsworthy scientific and academic activities, Vanderbilt has joined with 34 other top research universities to create Futurity.org, an online news channel designed to showcase the achievements of their scientists and engineers, medical researchers and scholars. Read More

The novel H1N1 flu virus is a presence on the Vanderbilt campus, as it is on many U.S. university campuses, but it appears to be no more serious than the regular seasonal flu, Vanderbilt's chief student health official says. Read More