The thickness of the cortex in a region of the brain that specializes in facial recognition can predict an individual's ability to recognize faces and other objects.
Female candidates have to be more qualified than their male opponents to prevail in an election because many people don’t see women as leaders, according to research that reveals hidden bias that can emerge in the voting booth.
A new class of DNA repair enzyme has been discovered which demonstrates that a much broader range of damage can be removed from the double helix in ways that biologists did not think were possible.
Recent research on the electric eel by Vanderbilt University biologist Ken Catania has revealed that it is not the primitive creature it has been portrayed. Instead, it has a sophisticated control of the electrical fields it generates that makes it one of the most remarkable predators in the animal kingdom.
A new "geospeedometer" that can measure the amount of time between the formation of an explosive magma melt and an eruption confirms that the process took less than 500 years in several ancient super-eruptions.
The U.S. federal government is preparing to launch a set of sweeping new regulations that will have a major impact on how biomedical researchers and social scientists work. It will require researchers to change how they get ethics approval, how they collect informed consent from participants, and more. “These proposed rules are the first major changes in more than 40 years to the laws on how researchers get permission for studies,” said Laura Stark, assistant professor of medicine, health and society, who has closely followed the evolution of research protocols and wrote a recent book on ethics regulations.
How happy you are may have something to do with who you know—and where you come from. Lijun Song, assistant professor of sociology, set out to discover whether knowing high-status people helped or harmed mental health, using depressive symptoms as a proxy. Her findings appear in the July 2015 issue of Social Science and Medicine.
New analysis shows that the scientific literature paints an overly rosy picture of the efficacy of psychotherapy for depression comparable to the bias previously found in reports of treatments with antidepressant drugs.
Vanderbilt students built a social media app to share knowledge and opinions about third wave coffee and coffee shops.
Invention of the first integrated circularly polarized light detector on a silicon chip opens the door for development of small, portable sensors could expand the use of polarized light for drug screening, surveillance, etc.
Immigration expert Robert Barsky describes the experiences of undocumented migrants, all around the world, bringing to life the challenges they face from the moment they consider leaving their country of origin, until the time they are deported back to it. Drawing on a broad array of academic studies, including law, interpretation and translation studies, border studies, human rights, communication, critical discourse analysis and sociology, Robert Barsky argues that the arrays of actions that are taken against undocumented migrants are often arbitrary, and exercised by an array of officials who can and do exercise considerable discretion, both positive and negative.
Juries in criminal cases typically decide if someone is guilty, then a judge determines a suitable level of punishment. New research confirms that these two separate assessments of guilt and punishment – though related -- are calculated in different parts of the brain. In fact, researchers found that they can disrupt and change one decision without affecting the other. New work by researchers at Vanderbilt University and Harvard University confirms that a specific area of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is crucial to punishment decisions. Researchers predicted and found that by altering brain activity in this brain area, they could change how subjects punished hypothetical defendants without changing the amount of blame placed on the defendants.
If terror strikes increase in the United States, some consumers will keep buying as they always have, but others will withdraw from certain markets to minimize their risk. Researchers say the key issue control. Does a person feel like her or she can control the odds of becoming a victim, should a terrorist attack occur?
In the popular mind, mass extinctions are associated with catastrophic events, like giant meteorite impacts and volcanic super-eruptions. But the world’s first known mass extinction, which took place about 540 million years ago, now appears to have had a more subtle cause: evolution itself. “People have been slow to recognize that biological organisms can also drive mass extinction,” said Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University.
New research shows that paying elected representatives more may result in better policies for voters.
Race and education shape employment outcomes for U.S.- and foreign-born blacks in surprising ways.
A Vanderbilt research team has successfully created a mechanical wrist less than 1/16th of an inch thick -- small enough to use in needlescopic surgery, the least invasive form of minimally invasive surgery.
Applying mild electrical stimulation to an area of the brain associated with cognitive control helps people with schizophrenia recognize errors and adjust their behavior to avoid them.
Vanderbilt chemists Brian Bachmann and John McLean have shown that creating bacterial "fight clubs" is an effective way to discover natural biomolecules with the properties required for new drugs.
A new experiment shows that auditory melodies can enhance a musician's visual awareness of written music, particularly when the two match.
A series of immersive virtual reality experiments has confirmed that the human brain’s internal navigation system works in the same fashion as the grid cell system recently found in other mammals.
Shift changes and movements of patients between different parts of a hospital are vulnerable times when mistakes are made, and a study from Vanderbilt University offers suggestions to offset the risk.
Vanderbilt biologist Laurence Zwiebel has received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant to create a wrist-band device that vaporizes a super-repellant thousands of times more powerful than DEET to create a personal no-fly zone" that protects people from mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects.
Vanderbilt researchers have made the world’s smallest spirals and found they have unique optical properties that are nearly impossible to counterfeit if they were added to identity cards, currency and other objects.
Jessica Oster and her colleagues have shown that the analysis of a stalagmite from a cave in north east India can detect the link between El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian monsoon.
Vanderbilt biologists have localized the seasonal light cycle effects that drive seasonal affective disorder to a small region of the brain called the dorsal raphe nucleus.
A group of researchers have produced a top 10 list of the best activist hedge funds for investors. These are the funds that make the most sizable investments.
Vanderbilt researchers have identified the role that a key protein associated with autism and the co-occurrence of alcohol dependency and depression plays in forming the spines that create new connections in the brain.
New research by Vanderbilt University's Katharine Donato and Blake Sisk examines why children from Latin America make the difficult journey north.
According to a new analysis, California's aggressive incentive program for installing rooftop solar-electric systems has not been as effective as generally believed.
Morality is not declining in the modern world. Instead, a new morality is replacing the previous one. Centered on individual self-fulfillment, and linked to administrative government, it permits things the old morality forbid, like sex for pleasure, but forbids things the old morality allowed, like intolerance and equality of opportunity.
EPA is establishing a new center at Vanderbilt University and the University of Pittsburgh to develop an alternative approach for toxicity testing to help evaluate the safety of the 80,000-plus chemicals in general commerce.
For the first time, three national experts on critical issues surrounding mass incarceration and restorative justice are featured at a conference hosted by the Cal Turner Program on Moral Leadership.
A team of Vanderbilt engineers is using magnetic force to design new and improved instruments for minimally invasive surgery. The use of magnetic actuation allows them to create tools that are more flexible and more powerful than conventional designs, which place the instruments on the end of long sticks.
Results of a brain mapping study challenge conventional wisdom that the "magic" which transforms visual information into the three-dimensional world that we perceive all occurs in the visual cortex.
A team of scientists from Vanderbilt and Stanford universities have created the first comprehensive map of the topsy-turvy climate in the western U.S, 21,000 years ago when Southwest was wet and the Northwest was dry and are using it to test and improve the global climate models that have been developed to predict how precipitation patterns will change in the future.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right