Category: Research

An international team of astronomers that includes Texas A&M’s Benjamin Boizelle and Jonelle Walsh has used the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to obtain the clearest view to date of cold gas rotation around a supermassive black hole and calculated the mass of this supermassive black hole — the largest ever measured with ALMA — to be a whopping 2.25 billion times that of our Sun.

Experimentation is the heart of scientific discovery, a process often limited only by drive, imagination and opportunity. Dozens of undergraduate students from across the nation recently seized theirs, spending the past two months at Texas A&M immersed in all things academic research while exploring their potential for graduate study, courtesy of a signature National Science Foundation program, Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU).

Senior Ethan Quinn looks every bit like someone who feels more at home in a weight room or chasing down opposing players on the field. This summer, the standout midfielder on the Seton Hill University lacrosse team temporarily traded his jersey in Pennsylvania for a lab coat in Aggieland to participate in Texas A&M Chemistry’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program. Meet the man and learn more about his motivation on the athletic and academic fields.

Texas A&M chemist Karen Wooley's laboratory is fighting hemorrhage — a leading cause of death in traumatic injuries — by developing a bioabsorbable wound dressing with encapsulated chitosan nanofibers that, when applied to liver injury sites in animals, dissolves in as little as seven days, eliminating the need for subsequent physical removal and any chance of re-injury in the process

Armed with new Hubble Space Telescope data and an improved technique, a team of astronomers including Texas A&M professor Lucas Macri has made the most accurate measurement of the universe's expansion rate to date — a surprising 4-sigma discrepancy from Planck's prediction that strengthens the case for new physics.

Timing is everything, including with regard to eating. In research published April 16 in Cell Reports, Texas A&M biologist Jerome Menet’s laboratory found that feeding time influences the liver’s biological clock in mice, with possible implications for overall physiology and health.

Texas A&M statistician Valen Johnson is one of about 40 contributing authors featured in The American Statistician special issue on p-values and statistical significance, along with a related Nature March 28 edition Correspondence. While he acknowledges raising standards would make it harder for researchers to publish, Johnson tells Undark magazine he sees potential for more discoveries and better science as researchers gain confidence in previous work and spend less time replicating studies.

Texas could see up to 300 million Monarch butterflies this season following an upward trend in numbers of the state insect of Texas, according to Texas A&M Center for Mathematics and Science Education researcher and butterfly expert Craig Wilson.

New results from STAR experiment show antiquarks' contribution to proton spin depends on "flavor" -- and in a way that's opposite to those flavors' relative abundance

Texas A&M astronomer Jennifer Marshall has been selected as Project Scientist for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) project, an 11.25-meter telescope being planned in Hawaii that's capable of studying up to 4,000 astronomical objects at once and positioned to lead the world in multi-object spectroscopy.

Texas A&M ranks first in Texas and 10th nationally among public institutions based on annual research expenditures -- nearly $1 billion! Thanks and gig 'em to all the Texas A&M Science researchers, laboratories, programs and principal investigators who help make such progress possible, not only for Texas A&M University but also for society as a whole -- whoop!

Each summer, undergraduate students from across the state, nation and world spend up to 10 weeks at Texas A&M learning what academic research is all about, courtesy of faculty and graduate student mentors in chemistry, mathematics, and physics and astronomy and the National Science Foundation-funded Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program.

Earlier this month, Texas A&M mathematicians William Johnson and Alexei Poltoratski delivered public lectures based on their respective expertise in Banach space theory and harmonic analysis in Rio de Janeiro as invited speakers at the International Congress of Mathematicians 2018, a coveted honor reserved for the top mathematicians worldwide.

Thanks to The Battalion for the recent feature on Texas A&M mathematician Anne Shiu and her National Science Foundation CAREER Award-funded research at the intersection of mathematics and biology that includes a new directed reading program for math undergraduates.

"As 20 percent of the world's energy consumption comes from overcoming friction in machines, [we're] excited to have our project, Mastering Friction to Reduce Current and Future Energy Demands, funded by the Texas A&M X-Grants Program to tackle this challenge." -- James Batteas, Texas A&M chemist