Reporting and analysis about scientific research and innovation in Texas
A decade of research by this University of Texas at Austin psychology prof has led to new ways of understanding the relationship between individuals and the spaces they inhabit, as he now reveals with Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You.Snoop posits that our things open a window onto
Karl Gebhardt and Gary Hill, two astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin, are racing to solve one of the greatest mysteries in science: What is dark energy? How does it work? Can it explain the origins of the universe? There’s only one problem. Dark energy may not actually
Born and raised in Houston, Linke is a third-generation Texan. She has been a professional astrologer since 1971. She also holds a master’s degree in behavioral science from the University of Houston– Clearlake and did her clinical training in marriage counseling and family therapy.The future represents the unknown, and the
How many Aggies does it take to turn one tabby or tin-can-eater into two? The no-joke answer is perhaps a dozen—the number of researchers, students, and staff working under Westhusin in the Reproductive Sciences Laboratory at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The Plainville, Kansas, native, who has a degree
Space, time, and Donald Judd reconsidered.
“It’s funny: I’ve never been scared on a shuttle mission. It’s just the nature of the job. You’re busy, you’re focused, you’re well trained, and you go, ‘You know, if I’m going to die, there’s nothing I can do about it.’”
Spoiler alert: The mythic Marfa lights may not be real. But there’s no way to know for sure, and that’s why they’re cool.
Writer-at-large Jan Reid on entrepreneur Richard Garriott and commercial space flights.
Why Texas could lose the biotech revolution—and end up, once again, an economic also-ran.
The break-up of the space shuttle Columbia was a chilling reminder that the astronauts who dare to dream and risk their lives for the benefit of all mankind are, at the end of the day, mere mortals.
On the strength of a simple if indelicate question—“Who’s the Father?”—Houston’s Caroline Caskey has made a big splash in biotech.
This summer’s hot topic? Weather.
Can Miller Quarles live forever? The 83-year-old Houstonian hopes so—and he’ll pay $100,000 to anyone who will help him.
Good chemistry.
To perfect a promising new gene therapy, doctors at Houston’s M. D. Anderson need time. Unfortunately, that’s one thing people with malignant brain tumors don’t have.
The inside story of how industrious NASA scientists discovered signs of life in a Martian rock and boosted the fortunes of the tabloids, Hollywood producers, and even the president.
Beaming over a new aircraft landing device.
The death of the superconducting supercollider may have been traumatic, but at their core the people of Waxahachie haven’t changed.
After a decade of lab work at Baylor College of Medicine, this husband-and-wife team has solved the mystery of hyperinsulinism.
Combining the latest technology with an old-fashioned passion for her work, Austin astronomer Anita Cochran redefined the solar system. Now her star is on the rise.
How a small Houston biotech company and a giant California-based rival are battling over who developed what may be a revolutionary cure for asthma and allergies.
The dinosaurs had been doing just fine for 150 million years. All of a sudden …
A Texas scientist ruffled some feathers when he said he had found the first bird.
Our fearless reporter survives a close encounter with UFO investigators.
Critics call it brutal and barbaric, but it may be the most effective treatment for sex offenders.
A state breeding program aims to fatten up the trim, pugnacious bass.
Ken Barnes wants to keep his dinosaur fossils near home.
At a Central Texas facility, researchers show lab-raised chimps things their mothers never taught them.
Computers will finally use commmon sense if an Austin high-tech team can make them think like people.
Heat + pressure + yttrium + a politically savvy University of Houston physicist = a formula to change the world.
In a land of contrasts, a few hours can mean the difference between drought and deluge.
The seeds of the Challenger disaster were sowed long ago, in the space agency’s conflict between its ideals and its politics.
Their business may read like a sci-fi script, but these aging astronauts, former Nasa engineers, technocrats, and high-risk junkies are serious about selling space.
Alice in Wonderland never discovered a mushroom half as exotic as Texas’ own native fungi.
The odds for having a child of our own were slim to none. We took a chance on slim.
Are eye surgeons miraculously changing the lives of folks with glasses as thick as Coke-bottle bottoms, or are they just making themselves rich ?
When armadillos weighed three tons and the long horns were on dinosaurs.
His first spacecraft blew up on the pad and his primary investor died, but the first free enterprise rocket finally flew from Matagorda.
Side by side near a Texas river are dinosaur tracks and what appear to be the marks of a human foot—proof, in the creationist mind, that evolution is bunk.
In Austin, experts in genetics are helping parents of children with birth defects come to terms with the most painful questions of their lives.
Along the silent, lovely beach, tiny armies fight in the tide, fierce battles rage in the sky, and nocturnal marauders slither across the sand.
Ten years ago the Apollo astronauts, technicians and scientists all, landed on the Moon and touched what poets only dreamed. But that touch changed their lives.
Lasers have been heralded as the greatest discovery since the computer, but they may be hazardous to your health.
That’s the message Ray Stanford sends nightly into outer space; so far no one has answered.
Star light, star bright, will the computer work tonight?
How the Texas heat can sap your energy, dull your intelligence, send you to an early grave, and make you sweat.
What you eat affects the way you think; and what you think affects the way you eat.
One giant step backward for the Moonmen.
