News

Monday, 22 February 2010

The World Travellers

These four students have recognized, and taken advantage of, one of the incontrovertible facts of the modern world. Science is global, and the scientific leaders of the 21st century will be the people who understand global issues and have the courage to immerse themselves in the unknown. Check out their stories: Kyle in Kiwiland Although most na...

Friday, 19 February 2010

Debating Health Care Reform at the Capitol

College of Natural Sciences students joined students from Austin Community College in a mock hearing on health care reform legislation at the Texas Capitol on Saturday, Feb. 13. The students filled the roles of Democratic and Republican members of Congress, and heard expert testimony from witnesses like Jose Camacho, executive director and general ...

Thursday, 18 February 2010

Coastal Birds Decline on Mustang Island

Tony Amos’s almost daily bird counts over the years have revealed a troubling decline in 10 of the 28 most common species of Mustang Island’s coastal birds.

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Danke schön, Deutschland

Tara Saad on holiday in Salzburg, Austria Tara Saad knew two things when she began planning her study abroad experience. Germany had to be the destination, and laboratory research had to be the main purpose. Beyond that, though, Saad had to get creative. “I individually emailed more than a hundred professors at various German universities with...

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

The European Perspective

Houston native Phuoc Anh-Thi Nguyen made the most of her summer abroad in Denmark. She got credit for two courses that she was able to transfer toward her Biology/Pre-pharmacy degree at UT. She stayed with a host family and learned about Danish culture. And she got a new perspective on the different ways that health care can be delivered. I sat do...

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Astronaut Sally Ride speaks on "Keeping Girls Interested in Science"

Dr. Sally Ride, America's first woman in space and now professor of space science at the University of California at San Diego, will give a talk on the topic of science education - "Keeping Girls Interested in Science."

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Kyle in Kiwiland

Although most natural sciences students who study abroad end up doing so over the summer—often through one of the university’s Maymester programs—biochemistry major Kyle Marshall wanted a more immersive experience. He didn’t want to lose a step in his academic progress, however, so he needed to find somewhere that had classes that would meet the re...

Monday, 15 February 2010

Lecture: The Search for Randomness

AUSTIN, Texas -- On Friday, February 19, at 3:15 p.m., renowned mathematician Persi Diaconis will speak on “The Search for Randomness.” “I will take a careful look at some of our most primitive images of random phenomena,” says Diaconis, “actions like flipping a coin, shuffling cards, and rolling a roulette ball. In each case, physics and math show...

Monday, 15 February 2010

Essay: Where the wild things were

We’re entering an age of vanishing wilderness, when the wild places were. To have any hope of preserving our biodiversity in the face of climate change, we need to be futurists, pragmatic but farsighted. It is time for radical notions. One such notion is to transplant species that otherwise have no hope.

Monday, 08 February 2010

Environmental Science Campus Proposed

Faculty envision a public science center like the California Academy of Science (CAS) at BFL. In this photo, CAS visitors explore the rainforest dome and its 100,000-gallon Amazon Flooded Forest tank. Photo © Tim Griffith. Courtesy: CAS. Brackenridge Field Lab (BFL) should expand to become a new environmental science campus for The University of Te...