News: Research

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

Research

Superfluids are Supposed to Flow Indefinitely. Physicists Just Watched One Stop Moving.

Researchers may have glimpsed a supersolid, an enigmatic quantum version of a classical solid.

An artist's illustration shows two thin layers of material stacked one on top of the other, each with an array of atoms represented by dots. The top layer's dots are blue, the bottom layer's dots are read.

Oden Institute

Study Reveals Hidden Topological Structure in Polarons

UT physicists found an unexpected layer of structure in one of solid-state physics’ most common quasiparticles.

A graphical representation of a sphere-like structure of various colored arrows floats above a similar structure, floppily rectangular, floating above a surface

UT News

Cytomegalovirus Breakthrough Could Lead to New Treatments

A new antibody design blocks cytomegalovirus from hiding from the immune system and could lead to safer, more effective treatments for vulnerable patients.

A woman in a lab coat and goggles connects a plastic tube to a piece of laboratory equipment laden with wires.

Research

Mental Health Intervention Reduces Severe Depression, Anxiety for Vulnerable Groups

The study highlights the importance of tailoring care to the needs of communities with service-access barriers.

A collage of multi-colored silhouettes of different people

Research

AI Tips Off Scientists to New Drug Target to Fight Monkeypox Virus

The breakthrough could be used in a new vaccine or antibody therapy to fight mpox, the disease caused by the monkeypox virus.

Structure of a surface protein on the monkeypox virus

Research

Experiment Sets Tightest Limits Yet on Proposed Dark Matter Particles

UT physicists involved with LUX-ZEPLIN helped analyze the largest dataset ever collected by a dark matter detector.

A large white cylinder in the center of a laboratory. A person wearing a full-body white clean room outfit descends nearby stairs.

UT Bridging Barriers

Cross-Cutting Edge: Good Systems Scholar Refines Alignment Research

Brad Knox, a UT computer scientist, focuses on ensuring AI systems act in ways that reflect human values.

A man holds a microphone and speaks to a group, in front of a banner that reads "Good Systems: A UT Grand Challenge Designing AI technologies that benefit society is our grand challenge" and a slide titled "AI systems that understand what humans want" as a cartoon girl's thought bubble reads "hidden state" and arrows pointing to the words dataset and estimate of hidden state are labeled "human input by psychological process" and "inverse algorithm derived from model of psychological process"

Dell Medical School

UT Austin Study Finds Diet Alters Breast Milk Composition

UT nutritional scientists found even small shifts towards more ultraprocessed foods can quickly alter breast milk.

A woman's arms are shown as she pours liquid from a plastic receptacle into a freezable bag.

Research

Unique Shape of Star’s Explosion Revealed Just a Day After Detection

Using the polarization of light, researchers revealed information about the geometry of the explosion that other types of observation cannot provide.

An exploding star is seen as a white ball of hot material in the center, surrounded by a ring of redder material

Research

Destroying Crazy Ant Nest Structure Makes Them Vulnerable to Pathogens

Research initiated at a UT field station keeps progressing. That is good news for a war on an invasive species.

Reddish brown worker ants tend small larvae which look like semi-transparent rice grains