Research

Rats that are socially isolated during a critical period of adolescence are more vulnerable to addiction to amphetamine and alcohol. Amphetamine addiction is also harder to extinguish in the socially isolated rats. These effects, which are described this week in the journal Neuron, persist even after the rats are reintroduced into the community of other…

Dr. Robert O. Messing, a nationally recognized addiction science researcher, will join The University of Texas at Austin as vice provost for biomedical sciences to help develop the new medical school. His appointment is effective Jan. 16.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered that the lack of a critical enzyme in the folic acid metabolic pathway leads to neural tube birth defects in developing embryos.

To infect a cell, a virus must be able to first find a suitable cell and then eject its genetic material into its host. This robot-like process has been observed in a virus called T7 and visualized by Ian Molineux and his colleagues.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a menu of 61 new strains of genetically engineered E. coli that may improve the efficacy of vaccines for diseases such as flu, pertussis, cholera and HPV.

The detailed changes in the structure of a virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium have been observed for the first time, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT Health) Medical School this week in Science Express.

A rapid response science team from the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics will help map the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the beach/barrier systems off the south shore of Long Island.

The Austin Forum on Science, Technology and Society will host “How Goodwill Became a Learning Organization with the Help of Technology.” This presentation will discuss the impact of incorporating new technologies and systems in a large, nonprofit service organization.

Allen Bard, in the College of Natural Sciences, and John Goodenough, in the Cockrell School of Engineering, are two of 12 eminent researchers who will receive the National Medal of Science this year, bringing the university’s overall total to five since 1962.

James Truchard, co-founder, president and CEO of National Instruments Corp., has contributed $10 million to the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin to help develop the Engineering Education and Research Center (EERC), which will house a new student-focused teaching lab.

Landscapes with large amounts of paved roads and impervious construction have lower numbers of ground-nesting bumblebees, which are important native pollinators, a study from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley shows.