News: Research

Read the latest news from the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin

Research

This Enzyme Plays a Key Role in Protecting Cells from Aging and Disease ​

Researchers from UT Austin have discovered insights about an enzyme that can protect cells from oxidative stress.

A representation of a n enzyme and a blob with a glowing reaction sparked by it

Research

Ultra-Processed Foods Pose Unique Dangers for People With Type 2 Diabetes

Researchers found ultra-processed foods, even diet ones, bring distinct risks for people with diabetes.

Image of red blood cells overlaid with images of a woman's face, potato chips, cola with ice and a woman injecting her bicep with diabetes medication.

Research

Researchers Identify Promising Combination Therapy for Common Blood Cancer

By exploiting the metabolism of cancer cells, researchers can make hard-to-treat cancers more susceptible to existing drugs.

A green tray holds a clear plastic tube with red liquid with a hand covered in a green glove holds a swab in the tube.

Research

UT Astronomers Find JWST Data Conflicts with Reionization Models

Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope spawned a new tension around when a major change in the universe happened.

An abstract pattern of blue, purple and black areas represents the output of a computer simulation of galaxies ionizing hydrogen gas during the epoch of Reionization

UT News

UT Astronomers Race To Capture Image of Exoplanet Near Star

Brendan Bowler was part of a team to help find the lowest-mass/closest-to-its-host-star distant planet ever found.

An astronomical digitialized sky survey shows stellar patches with various levels of brightness. In a pull-out nearby, a circle is labeled JWST, with a brightest section labeled AF Lep b near a host star. Comparison lines nearby indicate how the Jupiter-Sun Distance and Earth-Sun distance compare.

Jackson School of Geosciences

The ‘Lost’ Prehistoric Cats of Natural Bridge Caverns

Melissa Kemp is part of a team studying recently recovered cat fossils from a Texas cave that are about 11,500 years old.

The silhouette of a person standing inside a large cavern

Research

AI Trained on Evolution’s Playbook Develops Proteins that Spur Drug and Scientific Discovery

EvoRank offers a new and tangible example of how AI may help bring disruptive change to biomedical research and biotechnology more broadly.

A colorful ribbon with twists and turns represents the three-dimensional structure of a molecule

Department of Computer Science

Keeping Up with AI’s Increasingly Complex Networking Demands

A new framework called Transcraft makes the process of designing and implementing new network stacks simpler and more adaptable.

A portrait of three men

McDonald Observatory

Early Dark Energy Could Resolve Cosmology’s Two Biggest Puzzles

Michael Boylan-Kolchin and others show “early dark energy” might help solve the Hubble Tension and explain why there are more early galaxies than expected.

Views of the early universe from a computer model

Research

Carbohydrate Polymers Could be a Sweet Solution for Water Purification

In Cassandra Callmann and her team’s proof-of-concept, the sticky materials removed heavy metals including cadmium and lead.

A test tube with a small amount of blue liquid