Research conducted by University of Texas at Austin professors Andrea Gore and David Crews has been included on Discover magazine’s list of the “Top 100 Science Stories of 2007.” Gore is a professor of pharmacology and toxicology in the College of Pharmacy, and Crews is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Integrative Biology in the College of Natural Sciences. Their research was number 22 of 100 on the list. Gore and Crews found that pesticides and other chemicals that disrupt hormones can affect not only rats that come into contact with them, but might also affect mating behavior in later generations. The researchers discovered that female rats avoid males whose great-grandmothers were exposed to a common fruit crop fungicide, preferring instead males whose ancestors were uncontaminated. Their research shows that environmental contamination could affect the evolution of wildlife through changes in mating behavior.
For more information on the project visit http://cns.utexas.edu/communications/2007/03/crews_vinc.asp
Astronomers J Craig Wheeler and Robert Quimby‘s discovery of the brightest supernova ever recorded was named a top 10 scientific discovery in 2007 by Time magazine. The discovery was number three on the list.
Time wrote this about the discovery, “It was the first time scientists saw the death of a star as large as SN 2006gy, which was approximately 100 to 200 times the size of the sun only about a dozen of the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way are estimated to be this massive. SN 2006gy collapsed into a black hole and exploded in a galaxy 240 million light years away, and was first spotted by a Texas grad student in 2006. By the time researchers published their paper in The Astrophysical Journal in May, the supernova had been observed in the sky for eight straight months. Astronomers believe SN 2006gy may offer clues to the spectacular way huge stars died in the early days of the universe by converting some of their radiation into matter and antimatter particles, triggering a thermonuclear blast and to the way a much closer big star, Eta Carinae, could explode soon, putting on the most brilliant night sky show modern astronomers will have ever seen.”
For more information on the project visit http://cns.utexas.edu/communications/2007/10/supernova.asp
.
