Further Findings

Whenever I see a scientific study about water on Earth, I check to see if it involves the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).

GRACE is a NASA mission run by The University of Texas at Austin and the German Aerospace Center. Byron Tapley, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, is GRACE’s principal investigator.

Since the start of GRACE in 2002, data it has collected have generated scores of papers about the Earth’s climate and water resources.

The latest projects
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Kanish Mehta

In our last episode, Jay Kapoor, a soon-to-be freshman at The University of Texas at Austin, shared his experiences in the Science & Engineering Apprenticeship Program at the university’s Applied Research Laboratories (ARL:UT).

Now Kanish Mehta, who also will start the the university in the fall semester, shares his thoughts about the program.

Mehta graduated from Anderson High School. His supervisor in the ARL:UT program is Trevor Garner, a research associate in ARL:UT’s Space and Geophysics Laboratory. Mehta’s project is Investigating the Morphology of
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The Science & Engineering Apprenticeship Program at the university’s Applied Research Laboratories (ARL:UT) is a competitive program for graduating seniors from primarily Austin area high schools. The apprentices receive hands-on experience in laboratory research and development projects during the summer before they begin college.

Twenty one students are participating in the program this summer–16 at ARL:UT and five at the university’s Institute for Advanced Technology.

Two of the apprentices have shared their summer experiences with Further Findings. First up is Jay Kapoor. We’ll hear from
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Marc Airhart from the Jackson School of Geosciences sends this:

Mark Helper,left, receives a Haughton-Mars Project patch from Pascal Lee.

For more than 10 years, scientists interested in the exploration of the moon and Mars have visited an ancient impact crater in the Canadian high arctic that they say resembles some craters found on these other worlds.

Video of Mark Helper at Haughton-Mars Project

Mark Helper, a geologist at The University of Texas as Austin’s Department of Geological Sciences, recently returned from summer field
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While KEYE-Channel 42 interviewed Prof. James Tunnell about his optical skin cancer probe, Further Findings also had video equipment rolling.

Here is a clip of Tunnell explaining how the probe might work.

Ron Oliveira and James Tunnell

The skin cancer probe being developed in James Tunnell’s lab was featured on KEYE-TV-Channel 42 on the 10 p.m. newscast on July 20, 2009. KEYE’s Ron Oliveira went to Tunnell’s lab in the Biomedical Engineering building to interview Tunnell and Naras Rajaran, one of the graduate students working on the project.

See the video from KEYE.

The optical probe is designed to determine of a spot on the skin is benign or cancerous. If it’s not benign, the spot
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Jenn Davis and Keri Stephens

Keri Stephens, an assistant professor of communications studies, is in the midst of a research project investigating how people in organizations—businesses, nonprofits, schools and others—use cell phones, smart phones, pagers and similar devices.

Her first results show that when people use their devices in meetings they do so because they see other people doing it. Or if others aren’t using the devices, they won’t either.

Going in, Stephens and her co-author Jenn Davis thought that people were texting and
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People who get a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids in their diets may have a reduced risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and strokes, and fish are a major source of these fatty acids. But what good are omega-3s to the fish?

Omega-3s may give young fish the boost they need to dart away from predators, leading to greater survival of the vulnerable larvae and potentially larger populations of adults.

Read more at the College of Natural Sciences.

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To mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Further Findings is highlighting ways The University of Texas at Austin and its people touched or were touched by the mission. Know of others? Let us know.

Michael Collins, Texas archeologist

Michael Collins, an archeologist at The University of Texas at Austin, was a graduate student in archeology at the University of Arizona in 1969.

In July of that year, he was on a dig at the Tabun Cave in Israel, south
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To mark the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Further Findings is highlighting ways The University of Texas at Austin and its people touched or were touched by the mission. Know of others? Let us know.

The moon is covered with a layer of dust. NASA scientists and engineers knew that much.

But there was a hot debate about the depth of the dust.

The thin dusters thought there was a thin layer of dust that would not interfere with the
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