Further Findings

Most Foucault Pendulums are in places where they can be seen: in science museums or the lobbies of the buildings of university physics departments.

Where the pendulum swings/Photo by Shae Small

The one at The University of Texas at Austin is a bit off the beaten path. It’s on the far east side of campus in the Development building, which houses the university’s development offices, the Charles Dana Center and a health clinic.

But it still gets traffic.
Video of the pendulum

Some comes from
Read More …

Team Lucy CT: From the left, Ron Harvey, conservator; Alemu Admassu, curator; John Kappelman, anthropologist; and Richard Ketcham, geologist and CT Lab director.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with the Ethiopian government, have completed the first high-resolution CT scan of the world’s most famous fossil, Lucy, an ancient human ancestor who lived 3.2 million years ago.

Video on the CT Lab from NPR's Science Friday

John Kappelman, professor of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts, led the
Read More …

Kristina Durante

The research paper from Kristina Durante, a Ph.D. student, and her adviser, Dr. Norman Li, assistant professor of psychology, published this week snagged press attention around the world.

It’s no wonder it did. It involves women and men, hormones and sex and infidelity.

Here’s the top of the press release from The University of Texas at Austin:

Women with high levels of the sex hormone oestradiol may engage in opportunistic mating, according to a new study by psychology researchers at The University
Read More …

Norman Hackerman

To follow up on the news that the newest science building at The University of Texas at Austin will be named for Norman Hackerman, here is a link to a story we wrote about him several years ago.

In the story, Larry Faulkner, former president of the university, called Hackerman the most important figure in science in Texas because he laid much of the foundation for science in the state.

The Hackerman building is on the site of the Experimental Science Building, which
Read More …

Harry Swinney

The latest research paper from Harry Swinney, a physics professor at The University of Texas at Austin, is on bacteria. The experiment, on which the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science is based, took place in a Petri dish of agar.

Physics and bacteria? That’s not a combination that goes together like McCoy and Cosby, fish and chips or public television and pledge drives.

But there is a connection, said Swinney, the Sid Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in
Read More …

Science magazine has written a two-page profile of Zack Booth Simpson, a research scientist in the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology (ICMB).

The story details Simpson’s unusual entry into academic science and his contributions to the laboratories of professors Edward Marcotte, Andy Ellington and Ken Johnson in ICMB and John Davis in electrical and computer engineering. He was involved with the bacterial photography project that appeared in the journal Nature in 2005.

Besides working in the ICMB, Simpson, 38, is involved with Mine
Read More …

Mikhail Matz

The things Mikhail Matz, an assistant professor of integrative biology, and his colleagues were looking for off the island of Little San Salvador in the Bahamas, were creatures with “big eyes, nicely colored and that glow in the dark.”

The scientists were aboard Operation Deep Scope, a research expedition sponsored by the Ocean Exploration program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They explored the deep sea with a submersible vessel looking for things related to the interaction between light
Read More …

Bruce Buchanan, a government professor at The University of Texas at Austin, was quoted in the press more than 230 times during the 2008 presidential election.

Bruce Buchanan

He was one of several of the university’s experts whose research helped news consumers make sense of what was happening during the campaign. Others included Daron Shaw, Sean Theriault and James Galbraith.

“I’ve kind of defined it as a part of my portfolio as kind of a public service and for that reason I rarely
Read More …

Adela Ben-Yakar, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is featured in an article in the December 2008 edition of Wired magazine and on the magazine’s Web site.

She is developing laser microscalpels that would be able to excise a cancerous cell without damaging neighboring cells.

We wrote about her work for a Campus Cameo in the Playbook program distributed at Longhorn football games. It was in the Oct. 25 edition (the Oklahoma State game). For those of you who
Read More …

New posters were recently installed in the display windows on the first floor of the Main Building on The University of Texas at Austin campus.

They focus on four University of Texas at Austin researchers who made significant discoveries and brought new understanding to long-standing questions in their fields.

They are Hermann J. Muller, Linda Schele, Esmond Snell and Americo Paredes.

The poster with this post is about Schele, who studied the Mayan civilization of Central America.

Take a walk though the Main Building to
Read More …