News: Research

For the past quarter-century, the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory has helped scientists and engineers make groundbreaking discoveries—providing extremely bright X-rays to investigate everything from dinosaur bones and lunar rocks to materials for new solar panels and new pharmaceutical drugs. Now Argonne, which is operated by the University of Chicago, has been cleared to begin building a massive, $815 million upgrade to its kilometer-long X-ray facility. 

Raymond Moellering’s lab reports a new method to identify and interrogate the biophysical properties of tens of thousands of modified proteins simultaneously in live cells. This method, called “Hotspot Thermal Profiling,” therefore enables efficient selection of functionally important modifications for further study, as well as insight into the network of proteins and biomolecules that are interacting with that particular modification site in cells. 

Congratulations to Greg Engel, professor in the Department of Chemistry, Mark Rivers, Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Radiation Sources (CARS), and research professors, Peter Eng and Yanbin Wang, for earning grants from the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Read more about their projects.

Nagel explains how his findings in droplet and bubble experiments affect universality. 

The awarded grant will help Nord, utilize AI to design an experiment optimized to measure the expansion rate of the universe. Nord will also be working with Asst. Prof. Yuxin Chen. 

Assoc Prof. Frabrycky's research group noticed a star's irregular dimming pattern, leading to the discovery and precise measurement of a new exoplanet's mass. 

Prof. Wendy Freedman discusses the possibility of systematic errors in Hubble constant calculations with Science News.

Feinstein and her colleagues have discovered one exoplanet slightly larger than Earth and two exoplanets of a type not typically found in our solar system. 

Through the precise timing of  electrical muscle stimulators, UChicago scientists Pedro Lopes, Jun Nishida, and Shunichi Kasahara of Sony CSL have found a method to accelerating human reaction time. 

Through a recent publication by Research Assoc. Prof. Yokochi, scientists are now able to tell when water was deposited, its origins, and the climate conditions that produced it nearly 400,000 years ago.

Asst. Prof. Maureen Coleman leads initiative to study the microbiome of the Great Lakes in order to keep this fresh water source in good shape.  

With the help of fMRI imaging, Lopes designed a system that allowed researchers to isolate differences between the motor and sensory systems of the brain. This data could be used to guide engineers in designing the next wave of EMS devices. 

By feeding cyanobacteria virus-infected nitrogen, Asst. Profs. Coleman and Waldbauer obtain findings that illustrate virus-driven nutrient flow in marine ecosystems.  

Computer Science graduate student Steven Basart recently published a data set that can improve the accuracy of AI model image recognition technology.