Some of the world’s most powerful earthquakes involve multiple faults, and scientists are using supercomputers to better predict their behavior. Multi-fault earthquakes can span fault systems of tens to hundreds of kilometers, with ruptures propagating from one segment to the other. During the last decade, scientists have observed several cases of this complicated type of…

The University of Texas at Austin team that led a twin satellite system launched in 2002 to take detailed measurements of the Earth, called the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), reports in the most recent issue of the journal Nature Climate Change on the contributions that their nearly two decades of data have made…

Do you feel the warmth coming off your computer or cell phone? That’s wasted energy radiating from the device. With automobiles, it is estimated that 60% of fuel efficiency is lost due to waste heat. Is it possible to capture this energy and convert it into electricity? Researchers working in the area of thermoelectric power…

Can artificial intelligence (AI) help us understand how the brain understands language? Can neuroscience help us understand why AI and neural networks are effective at predicting human perception? Research from Alexander Huth and Shailee Jain from The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) suggests both are possible. In a paper presented at the 2018…

It’s easy to take a lot for granted. Scientists do this when they study stress, the force per unit area on an object. Scientists handle stress mathematically by assuming it to have symmetry. That means the components of stress are identical if you transform the stressed object with something like a turn or a flip.…

On April 4, 2017, the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northwest Syria experienced one of the worst chemical attacks in recent history. A plume of sarin gas spread more than 10 kilometers (about six miles), carried by buoyant turbulence, killing more than 80 people and injuring hundreds. Horrified by the attack, but also inspired to…

HIV-1 replicates in ninja-like ways. The virus slips through the membrane of vital white blood cells. Inside, HIV-1 copies its genes and scavenges parts to build a protective bubble for its copies. Scientists don’t understand many of the details of how HIV-1 can fool our immune system cells so effectively. The virus infects 1.2 million…

Sometimes, when experimental scientists get their hands on a supercomputer, it can change the course of their careers and open up new questions for exploration. This was the case with Abdurrahman and Tülay Atesin, husband and wife chemists, collaborators and professors at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Experimentalists by training, when they moved…

What makes kevlar stop a bullet, at the atomic level? The properties of materials emerge from their molecular or atomic structure, yet many details between the micro and the macro remain a mystery to science. Scientists are actively researching the rational design of targeted supramolecular architectures, with the goal of engineering their structural dynamics and…

Every two and a half hours, a new wind turbine rises in the U.S. In 2016, wind provided 5.6 percent of all electricity produced, more than double the amount generated by wind in 2010, but still a far cry from its potential. A team of researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas)…

From cars and bicycles to airplanes and space shuttles, manufacturers around the world are trying to make these vehicles lighter, which helps lower fuel use and lessen the environmental footprint. One way that cars, bicycles, airplanes and other modes of transportation have become lighter over the last several decades is by using carbon fiber composites.…

Evolution takes eons, but it leaves marks on the genomes of organisms that can be detected with DNA sequencing and analysis. As methods for studying and comparing genetic data improve, scientists are beginning to decode these marks to reconstruct the evolutionary history of species, as well as how variants of genes give rise to unique…

As much as we complain about air travel, the fact is, flying has gotten considerably cheaper, safer, faster and even greener, over the last 60 years. Today’s aircraft use roughly 80 percent less fuel per passenger-mile than the first jets of the 1950s – a testimony to the tremendous impact of aerospace engineering on flight.…

One of the most talked about biological breakthroughs in the past decade was the discovery of the genome editing tool CRISPR/Cas9, which can alter DNA and potentially remove the root causes of many hereditary diseases. Originally found as part of the immune system of the Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, CRISPR associated protein 9 (CAS9), in its…