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Deep in the night in muddy African rivers, a fish uses electrical charges to sense the world around it and communicate with other members of its species. Signaling in electrical spurts that last only a few tenths of a thousandth of a second allows the fish to navigate without letting predators know it is there. Now scientists have found that the evolutionary trick these fish use to make such brief discharges could provide new insights, with a bearing on treatments for diseases such as epilepsy.

Summer blockbuster season is here, and an impressive crop of films feature science concepts. We sat down with scientists at the University of Texas at Austin to find out how close to reality the movie magic really is. So, grab some popcorn as we dust off our Science Truth Detector and see which 2018 films offer up sound science this summer.

Update: In October 2019, exoplanet research by scientists at Princeton and the University of Geneva was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Read on to learn about the UT connection to pioneering the search for planets beyond our solar system.

With spring gardening season in full swing, Natural Sciences researchers have suggestions for the perfect vegetable garden, flower bed, lawn or landscape. In fact, scientists with the University of Texas at Austin can help you do more than have a great looking and productive yard: they've got tips that would help the local environment and maybe even the gardeners themselves.

Tuesday marks the 50^th anniversary of "2001: A Space Odyssey." The groundbreaking science-fiction film earned an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and appears on several of the American Film Institute's Top 100 lists. But what many remember best about the movie is HAL 9000, the murderous artificial intelligence aboard the spaceship that has been ranked cinema's 13^th best villain.

In one of the largest and most diverse studies of transgender youths to date, researchers led by a team at The University of Texas at Austin have found that when transgender youths are allowed to use their chosen name in places such as work, school and at home, their risk of depression and suicide drops.

​In the latest peer-reviewed publication on the potential impacts of a border wall on plants and animals, conservation biologists, led by a pair of scientists from The University of Texas at Austin, say that border walls threaten to harm endangered Texas plants and animals and cause trouble for the region's growing ecotourism industry.

This month marks the centennial of the first case of one of the world's deadliest flu outbreaks, which was reported on a Kansas army base. It is estimated that the 1918 flu infected 500 million people around the world and killed 50-100 million. With the 100^th anniversary, we sat down with graduate student Spencer Fox, who studies the flu virus and flu pandemics.

A University of Texas at Austin professor and her team were honored with a prestigious SXSW Interactive Innovation Award for the MasSpec Pen, a device that will allow surgeons to identify cancerous tissue in seconds.

The city's only known year-round resident peregrine falcon is getting a global audience. The bird, nicknamed Tower Girl, lives atop the University of Texas at Austin Tower and has a handful of avid fans who love to watch one of the world's fastest animals dive through the skies above campus. And now, UT's Biodiversity Center has launched a live-streaming webcam so that viewers around the world can observe everyone's favorite local raptor in real time.