Correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation. It's a warning that echoes throughout the halls of science, but is not always heeded. A new study in the journal Nature by associate professor Alex Huk and graduate students Leor Katz and Jacob Yates provides a perfect case study.
This summer, we're celebrating a milestone: one year of telling you science stories from the frontlines here at the University of Texas at Austin on the Point of Discovery Podcast. Tell us how we're doing in our listener survey: CLICK HERE
Last week Robert Deans, a University of Texas at Austin graduate student in ecology, evolution and behavior, discovered an extremely rare orchid in an unexpected place—at an urban biological field station in the heart of Austin, Texas.
Computer scientist Marijn Heule and his colleagues have solved a decades-old math challenge known as the boolean Pythagorean Triples problem (BPTP) and, in the process, created the largest mathematical proof ever, at a whopping 200 terabytes.
As the summer movie season kicks into high gear, we talk with a scientist about some of the challenges in simulating the way everyday objects behave on the big screen through computer generated imagery (CGI). Etienne Vouga's computer simulations have helped bring to life a wizard's hair in The Hobbit and clothing in Tangled.
Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a new method to rapidly detect a single virus in urine, as reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
With an advance that one cryptography expert called a "masterpiece," University of Texas at Austin computer scientists have developed a new method for producing truly random numbers, a breakthrough that could be used to encrypt data, make electronic voting more secure, conduct statistically significant polls and more accurately simulate complex systems such as Earth's climate.
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have for the first time revealed how a group of drugs that are being developed to treat hepatitis C works. Pharmaceutical companies might be able to apply these new insights to future drugs designed to address a deadly disease.
Philip 'Uri' Treisman, founder and executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, has been honored with two major education awards nationally: the Ross Taylor/Glenn Gilbert National Leadership Award from the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics and a Piper Professorship from the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation.
You may have heard of serotonin, a chemical found throughout the brain that regulates a host of mental states such as mood, appetite and alertness. When we have enough of it, we have an overall sense of wellbeing and happiness. When we're running low on it, we can experience depression.
Read our publication, The Texas Scientist, a digest covering the people and groundbreaking discoveries that make the College of Natural Sciences one of the most amazing and significant places on Earth.
