News: Research

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

Texas Scientist

UT Austin Harnesses Power of Biology in Partnership with Army Research Laboratory

Inside the "biological foundry" at the Army Research Lab's ARL-South partnership on the campus of UT Austin

A scientist leans into a laboratory hood and moves samples under a robotic arm

Research

Switchgrass Genes Offer Advantages as Climate Change Tool

This native grass can capture atmospheric carbon in its substantial root system.

Large bundles of swtichgrass in a field.

UT News

Texas Astronomers Discover Strangely Massive Black Hole in Milky Way Satellite Galaxy

UT astronomers María José Bustamante, Eva Noyola, Karl Gebhardt and Greg Zeimann, with colleagues from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, made the discovery.

An inset within a larger picture of the Milky Way shows both luminous stars and an apparent anomoly

Department of Molecular Biosciences

Breakthrough in Fight on Tick-Borne CCHF Virus is Latest Use of New Strategy Against Diseases

Scientists are developing vaccines and other treatments for the tick-borne Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF)

A multicolored molecule

UT News

As We Develop, the Brain Connects Lessons Learned Differently

A new study of brain activity patterns in people doing a memory task finds that the way we make inferences changes dramatically as we age.

Two scientists look at a computer monitor with brain scan images

Research

First-Gen Student Navigates Own Path, Helps Others Chart Theirs

Guillermo Lezama who studies physics at UT Austin talks about how he became interested in the subject and his experience being a first-generation college student.

Portrait of a young man

Research

New Gravitational Wave Catalog Reveals Black Holes of ‘All Shapes and Sizes’

In a paper published Nov. 7th on the preprint server ArXiv, the team has detected a further 35 gravitational wave events since the last catalog release in...

Chart showing masses of more than 100 black holes and neutron stars detected by gravitational waves

UT News

How a Natural Disaster Can Bring Couples Closer

A new study has implications for how to help families in the aftermath of natural disasters.

An older man in a yellow rain coat holds the arm of an older woman, right, as they wade through ankle-deep flood waters during Hurricane Harvey

Research

New Model Reveals How Chromosomes Get Packed Up

The first theoretical model of condensin, a molecular machine involved in packing and unpacking chromosomes, accurately reproduces all known experiments with just two parameters.

Illustrations of a molecule in two states, open and closed

Research

Like Their Domestic Cousins, Native Bees are Hurt by Pesticides

Numerous studies have found negative impacts of agrochemicals, such as neonicotinoids, on both honey bees and native bees, and researchers like Felicity Muth and her...

A purple bee