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For Men of Color, High Academic Motivation Does Not Bring Academic Success

By Guest PostMarch 30, 2014Generalacademic success, american society, austin, black, cryptodira, halsberger schildkroeten, hispanics, jehol gruppe, kreidezeit, marton rabi, schildkroete, stammbaum, university of texas, xiaochelys ningchengensis

AUSTIN, Texas — Despite higher levels of engagement in the community college experience — from rarely skipping classes to accessing tutoring services more frequently — male students of color have lower academic outcomes than White male students who are significantly less engaged, according to a recent University of Texas at Austin report.

“Aspirations to Achievement: Men of Color and Community Colleges” was produced by the College of Education’s Center for Community College Student Engagement (CCCSE). It is based on responses from more than 453,000 students nationwide to the Community College Survey of Student Engagement. (more…)

New Research Revises Conventions for Deciphering Color in Dinosaurs While Suggesting Connection between Color and Physiology

By Guest PostFebruary 14, 2014Nature, Scienceanchiornis, ancient maniraptoran dinosaurs, austin, chang fu zhou, change, china university, cold blooded, color in dinosaurs, crocodiles, deciphering, dinosaur physiology, diverse melanosomes, diversity, ectothermic, endothermic, evolutionary emergence, evolutionary role, julia clarke, ke qin gao, lizards, matthew shawkey, microraptor, paravians, protofeathers, pycnofibers, quanguo li, sinosauropteryx, turtles, university of akron, university of texas, warm blooded

AUSTIN, Texas — New research that revises recently established conventions allowing scientists to decipher color in dinosaurs may also provide a tool for understanding the evolutionary emergence of flight and changes in dinosaur physiology prior to the origin of flight.

In a survey comparing the hair, skin, fuzz and feathers of living terrestrial vertebrates and fossil specimens, a research team from The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Akron, the China University of Geosciences and four other Chinese institutions found evidence for evolutionary shifts in the relationship between color and the shape of pigment-containing organelles known as melanosomes, as reported in the Feb. 13 edition of Nature. (more…)

Brain Scans Show We Take Risks Because We Can’t Stop Ourselves

By Guest PostFebruary 7, 2014Healthadhd, austin, balloon analogue, bart, brain activity, brain scans, developing an addiction, drunk driving, executive function, external factor, health relevant, hunger, lack of sleep, magnetic resonance imaging, make decision, mri, patterns of activity, peer pressure, risk task, risky behavior, risky decisions, russell poldrack, sarah helfinstein, scanner, take risks, university of texas, unprotected sex, unsafe sex, video game

AUSTIN, Texas — A new study correlating brain activity with how people make decisions suggests that when individuals engage in risky behavior, such as drunk driving or unsafe sex, it’s probably not because their brains’ desire systems are too active, but because their self-control systems are not active enough.

This might have implications for how health experts treat mental illness and addiction or how the legal system assesses a criminal’s likelihood of committing another crime. (more…)

The Death of the Death Penalty?

By Guest PostJanuary 31, 2014General, Mediaamericans, austin, capital punishment, death, death penalty, execution, families, homicide survivor, lwop, marilyn peterson armour, mark umbreit, minnesota, murder victims, parole, social work, texas, traumatic act, trial strategy, ultimate penal sanction, university of minnesota, university of texas, ut austin

Texas leads the nation in executions. Minnesota has no death penalty. So two researchers—one from the University of Minnesota and one from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)—teamed up to find out something no one had ever looked at before: what the death penalty does for the murder victims’ families. They compared family survivors’ experiences in Texas with Minnesota, the latter one of 18 states with life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) as its “Ultimate Penal Sanction.”

The study used in-person interviews with victims’ families to examine the death penalty process and its long-term impact on the families. (more…)

UT Austin Engineers Build First Nonreciprocal Acoustic Circulator: A One-Way Sound Device

By Guest PostJanuary 31, 2014Scienceandrea alu, austin, caleb sieck, cockrell school, compact acoustic circulator, electronic circulator, electronic components, engineering, giant linear nonreciprocity, light, michael haberman, nonreciprocal, nonreciprocal acoustic circulator, one way, port 1, port 2, preston wilson, radio wave, romain fleury, sound device, sound isolation, three port device, university of texas

AUSTIN, Texas — A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering has built the first-ever circulator for sound. The team’s experiments successfully prove that the fundamental symmetry with which acoustic waves travel through air between two points in space (“if you can hear, you can also be heard”) can be broken by a compact and simple device.

“Using the proposed concept, we were able to create one-way communication for sound traveling through air,” said Andrea Alù, who led the project and is an associate professor and David & Doris Lybarger Endowed Faculty Fellow in the Cockrell School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Imagine being able to listen without having to worry about being heard in return.” (more…)

Bats Use Water Ripples to Hunt Frogs

By Guest PostJanuary 26, 2014Nature, Scienceanti predator strategy, austin, bats, central, echolocation, eeb, frog, frog eating bats, leiden university, male tungara frog, mike ryan, natural form, physalaemus pustulosus, predator, pulsating sac, rachel page, rival, ryan taylor, salisbury university, sonar, south america, stri, trachops cirrhosus, university of texas, water ripples, wouter halfwerk

AUSTIN, Texas — As the male túngara frog serenades female frogs from a pond, he creates watery ripples that make him easier to target by rivals and predators such as bats, according to researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Leiden University and Salisbury University.

A túngara frog will stop calling if it sees a bat overhead, but ripples continue moving for several seconds after the call ceases. In the study, published this week in the journal Science, researchers found evidence that bats use echolocation — a natural form of sonar — to detect these ripples and home in on a frog. The discovery sheds light on an ongoing evolutionary arms race between frogs and bats. (more…)

Decade-Old Rover Adventure Continues on Mars and Earth

By Guest PostJanuary 4, 2014Scienceancient environment, austin, bekah sosland, brett williams, columbia hills, earth, endeavour crater, Facebook, fredericksburg, high school teacher, image, john callas, jpl, mars, mars rovers, mars spacecraft, martian history, NASA, opportunity, red surface, rover adventure, rover project, spirit, Twitter, university of texas, water rich

Eighth graders didn’t have Facebook or Twitter to share news back then, in January 2004. Bekah Sosland, 14 at the time, learned about a NASA rover landing on Mars when the bouncing-ball video on the next morning’s Channel One news in her Fredericksburg, Texas, classroom caught her eye.

“I wasn’t particularly interested in space at the time,” she recalled last week inside the spacecraft operations facility where she now works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “I remember I was talking with friends, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed this thing bouncing and rolling on a red surface. I watched as it stopped and opened up, and it had this rover inside.” (more…)

Natural Gas Saves Water and Reduces Drought Vulnerability, Even When Factoring in Water Lost to Hydraulic Fracturing

By Guest PostDecember 27, 2013Environmentaustin, bridget scanlon, coal, coal steam turbine, coal technology, cst, economic geology, electric power supply, fracture surrounding rocks, horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, jean philippe nicot, natural gas, ngcc, plants, reduces drought vulnerability, texas, texas power plants, university of texas, water, water lost

AUSTIN, Texas – A new study finds that in Texas, the U.S. state that annually generates the most electricity, the transition from coal to natural gas for electricity generation is saving water and making the state less vulnerable to drought.

Even though exploration for natural gas through hydraulic fracturing requires significant water consumption in Texas, the new consumption is easily offset by the overall water efficiencies of shifting electricity generation from coal to natural gas. The researchers estimate that water saved by shifting a power plant from coal to natural gas is 25 to 50 times as great as the amount of water used in hydraulic fracturing to extract the natural gas. Natural gas also enhances drought resilience by providing so-called peaking plants to complement increasing wind generation, which doesn’t consume water. (more…)

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