Research News
Feet to the Fire
Environment impact assessments are good for corporations and the planet. For 16 years, the Emerging Pathogens Institute’s Burton Singer has tracked a little-known undercurrent of environmental regulation. Although many scientists and activists are rightfully concerned about the effects of corporate development in vulnerable areas, such development has an important benefit: required environmental impact assessments (EIAs). […]
UF Historian Receives Prestigious African History Award
UF’s Nancy Rose Hunt Receives Major Book Award for Congo History Nancy Rose Hunt, UF professor of history and African studies, has received the Martin A. Klein Award honoring the best histories of Africa. The American Historical Association will present the award to Hunt in January 2017 during their 131st Annual Meeting. A Nervous State: […]
Geography Department Receives NSF Grant
Robert Walker of the Center for Latin American Studies and international team receive award to study effects of neoliberal policy on Mexican farming practices and their impact on deforestation. UF’s Department of Geography and Center for Latin American Studies have received a major award from the National Science Foundation to study shifting agricultural practices in […]
UF Researchers Tackle Dengue
Dengue vaccine could cause more severe infections in some settings. Dengue (pron. DEN-gay) is one of the most common viral infections around the world, with widespread occurrence in Africa and Southeast Asia, and can lead to the life-threatening hemorrhagic fever. Although most people recover well, UF researchers have found the first approved dengue vaccine may […]
The Cinematic Society
UF’s Barbara Mennel Awarded Prestigious German Fellowship to Study Women and Work in Film Movies often are more telling of current social and economic issues than the news or research articles—gender issues especially so. The feminization of labor in the 21st century has been captured in film but not necessarily in scholarship. UF film studies […]
UF’s Iron Man, Part Two
The American Chemical Society has just announced their 2016 Fellows, and UF Drago Chair of Chemistry George Christou is on the esteemed list. The ACS has named 57 chemists who have made significant contributions in their field in the July 18 issue of Chemical & Engineering News. Christou is one of only two Florida chemists named […]
Setting the Gold Standard
UF chemistry professor is first to use light to make gold crystal nanoparticles A team of University of Florida researchers has figured out how gold can be used in crystals grown by light to create nanoparticles, a discovery that has major implications for industry and cancer treatment and could improve the function of pharmaceuticals, medical […]
Smart Drugs
UF Chemistry Professor Receives Award for Futuristic Polymer Many people have experienced unpleasant side effects from medications – or just don’t like needles. One step to improving drug delivery for patients is to build “smart” proteins that can be released into the body as slowly and specifically as needed. Prof. Brent Sumerlin is doing just […]
Under the Skin
UF English Professor Receives Guggenheim Fellowship “She had to save face.” “He got under my skin.” These expressions may seem common now, but before the 19th century, people had a very different view of how humans lived in their bodies. UF English professor Pamela K. Gilbert is exploring the Victorian-era notions of skin as a […]
The Iron Man of UF
UF Professor of Chemistry Honored for Life’s Work If you thought electronics couldn’t get any smaller or more powerful, you might be surprised to learn that physics research at UF is contributing to yet more advancements in nanotechnology. UF chemistry professor George Christou has received acclaim for his discovery of single-molecule magnets and metal-oxo clusters—microscopic, […]
NEH Awards Professor Trysh Travis
The National Endowment for the Humanities announced its annual research fellowships on Dec. 14, 2015, and Professor Trysh Travis of the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research was on the list. She has received an NEH research fellowship for calendar year 2017 for a new book project, Reading Matters: Books, Bookmen, and the Creation […]
Power Trio of Professors
NSF DMREF awards 1.2 million to three UF Physics and Chemistry professors Congratulations to Hai-Ping Cheng (Physics), George Christou (Chemistry) and Xiao-Guang Zhang (Physics), who have received a $1.2 million award from the NSF DMREF program. Inspired by the materials genome initiative, the focus of this joint theory/experiment, physics/chemistry project is the search for and […]
Peeking into our galaxy’s stellar nursery
Astronomers have long turned their telescopes, be they on satellites in space or observatories on Earth, to the wide swaths of interstellar medium to get a look at the formation and birth of stars. However, the images produced over the last 50 years look more like weather maps showing storm systems instead of glittering bursts […]
Is the Planet Headed for an Extinction Crisis?
In the movie Avatar, so many magnificent animals have gone extinct that scientists can only study them virtually. This environmentally ravaged Earth is set in the near future, in the year 2154, but according to University of Florida biologist Todd Palmer and his colleagues, the Earth in 2015 is already undergoing an accelerated mass extinction. […]
Professor of Math Named SIAM Fellow
Congratulations to Professor William Hager for being named a 2015 Fellow in the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is being honored for contributions to optimal control, optimization theory, and numerical optimization algorithms. Hager is a co-director of the Center for Applied Optimization here at UF. His research work focuses on numerical analysis, optimization, […]
When A Bright Light Fades
Astronomer Charles Telesco is primarily interested in the creation of planets and stars. So, when the University of Florida’s giant telescope was pointed at a star undergoing a magnificent and explosive death, Telesco, a UF professor, didn’t immediately appreciate what a rare and valuable find he had. He soon learned. The event was about to […]
Decoding the Tree of Life
UF geneticist contributes to groundbreaking study of bird evolution Nature abhors a vacuum, which may explain the findings of a new study showing that bird evolution exploded 65 million years ago when nearly everything else on earth — dinosaurs included — died out. The study is part of an ambitious project, published in the Dec. […]
The Human Touch
New research suggests animals prefer human connections What do animals really want? A new study from the University of Florida suggests it might be human contact, at least in the case of some Galapagos tortoises. Lindsay Mehrkam, a UF doctoral student in psychology, and psychology professor Nicole Dorey have published a paper in the journal […]
As Elephants Go, So Do the Trees
Research shows hunting can have catastrophic effects on tropical forests. Overhunting has been disastrous for elephants, but their forest habitats have also been caught in the crossfire. A first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at the University of Florida shows that the dramatic loss of elephants, which disperse seeds after eating vegetation, is leading to the […]
Ebola May Be Creating Its Own Immunity
The spread of Ebola in West Africa reveals two truths: The disease is swift, and it is devastating. Amid the chaos of deadly outbreak, researchers say another truth may exist: The disease might be quietly inoculating a significant portion of the population who are exposed to the virus but never succumb to it or show […]