Research News
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 […]