Vanderbilt University

With the rise of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” we need new treatments to keep us from returning to a dark age of medicine. Now, researchers from Vanderbilt University have found a new class of antibiotic hiding in plain sight: human breast milk.

A pair of independent studies from two teams used CRISPR technology​ to genetically alter ants to remove their ability to "smell," which resulted in their inability to interact with normal ants and produced changes in their brains.

Karl Zelik says that he's "sick of Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne being the only ones with performance-boosting supersuits." That's why he teamed up with Erik Lamers to create a mechanized undergarment. While it doesn't allow the wearer to fly, it could keep them from putting their back out.​

In the future, we might overcome anxiety about a dying phone battery by doing a few star jumps. Researchers are developing an ultra-thin device that can generate electricity from motions as subtle as sitting down, opening up possibilities of clothes that charge phones or light up like an LCD screen.

The machine used to spin up cotton candy may also be the answer to a new generation of self-destructing electronics. A new form of electrical circuitry made of a spinable polymer must be kept above a temperature of 32° C (89.6° F) or it dissolves in water.

​Many wild elephants already wear GPS-equipped collars, which let wildlife officials track their whereabouts. An upgrade to those collars, however, could soon allow those officials to instantly know when poachers are shooting at the elephants.

​Next time your smartphone freezes, the culprit might actually be the cosmic rays that are constantly raining down on us from outer space. A new study has examined how modern consumer electronics are becoming more vulnerable to cosmic interference, and suggests ways to build better chips.

Scientists have discovered a Zika antibody that can potentially protect developing fetuses, probably the number-one victim of the disease.​

​​Using a millennia-old blueprint and two of the most abundant scrap metals in the US, scientists have developed a battery prototype that could one day offer a cheap and accessible way to store power off the grid.

Scientists have found that by delivering a mild electrical current to a certain part of the brain they can affect how it processes visual information, leading not only to sharpened focus for the subject, but new understanding of our sense of sight.

One of the hurdles in creating lab-grown organs is that the cells in such a structure need to be quickly and cheaply supplied with a way of receiving nutrients. Researchers at Vanderbilt University (VU) may have just leaped that hurdle using a most unexpected tool – a cotton candy machine.

To help find out if its worth going to a particular asteroid, scientists from Vanderbilt and Fisk Universities are developing a new gamma-ray spectroscope that's capable of scanning asteroids for valuable minerals.