Fate of Sinking Tectonic Plates Has Long Puzzled Scientists – Now They’ve Found an Answer
Our world’s surface is a jumble of jostling tectonic plates, with new ones emerging as others are pulled under. The ongoing cycle keeps our continents…
University of Texas at Austin News
New Hydrogel Tablet Can Rapidly Purify Contaminated Water
As much as a third of the world’s population does not have access to clean drinking water, according to some estimates, and half of the…
Leading Supercomputing Center Marks Two Decades of Powering Discoveries Across Science and Engineering
Twenty years ago, a handful of computing experts with a hand-me-down Cray computing cluster began the journey of building the Texas Advanced Computing Center, or…
Region of “Super Corals” Discovered Thriving in Extremely High Levels of Carbon Dioxide
In 2019, a hydrology professor at The University of Texas at Austin set out on a research project to see if he could identify harmful…
Metals Supercharge Method To Bury Billions of Tons of Harmful Carbon Dioxide Under the Sea for Centuries
Capturing and burying carbon is one of the most promising ways to blunt the pace of climate change University of Texas and ExxonMobil researchers found…
Fast and Furious Floods From Overflowing Craters Shaped the Surface of Mars
On Earth, river erosion is usually a slow-going process. But on Mars, massive floods from overflowing crater lakes had an outsized role in shaping the…
Water in Bedrock Is Sustaining Trees Across Country – Long-Held Assumptions About Where Trees Get Their Water Overturned
You can’t squeeze water from a rock. But tree roots can — and they’re doing it more frequently than scientists previously thought, with a new…
Breakthrough in Supercharging Reactions for Clean Energy Fuel Cells
The demand for clean energy has never been higher, and it has created a global race to develop new technologies as alternatives to fossil fuels….
Unraveling a Mystery: Bird Brains Left Other Dinosaurs Behind
Today, being “birdbrained” means forgetting where you left your keys or wallet. But 66 million years ago, it may have meant the difference between life…
Clean Energy Breakthrough: Making Hydrogen Is Hard, but Researchers Just Solved a Major Hurdle
For decades, researchers around the world have searched for ways to use solar power to generate the key reaction for producing hydrogen as a clean…
Exotic Beetle That Can Survive in Volcanic Areas Inspires New Cooling Materials
A type of beetle capable of regulating its body temperature in some of the hottest places on Earth is the centerpiece of new research with…
Optical Tweezer Technology Breakthrough Overcomes Dangers of Heat
Three years ago, Arthur Ashkin won the Nobel Prize for inventing optical tweezers, which use light in the form of a high-powered laser beam to capture and…
Conclusive Review Finds Evidence Against Physically Punishing Kids Is Clear
A conclusive narrative review has found physical punishment of children is not effective in preventing child behavior problems or promoting positive outcomes and instead predicts…
Staged Alert COVID-19 System Linked to Shorter Lockdowns and Lives Saved
A staged alert system, designed by scientists and public health officials to guide local policies, helped one city prevent hospital surges and long lockdowns, according…
Which Way Does the Solar Wind Blow? Supercomputers Improve Space Weather Prediction
Using supercomputers, researchers develop new software for improved space weather prediction. The surface of the sun churns with energy and frequently ejects masses of highly-magnetized…
A Glowing New Weapon in the Fight Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
In the perpetual arms races between bacteria and human-made antibiotics, there is a new tool to give human medicine the edge, in part by revealing…
Solving a Natural Riddle of Water Filtration to Create Clean Water While Consuming Less Energy
For many engineers and scientists, nature is the world’s greatest muse. They seek to better understand natural processes that have evolved over millions of years,…
New Research Finds Good News for Designing the Next Generation of Coronaviruses Vaccines
Our Immune Systems Blanket the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein With Antibodies The most complete picture yet is coming into focus of how antibodies produced in people…
