Editor’s note: A 30 column is a chance for departing senior staffers to say farewell and reflect on their time spent in The Daily Texan’s basement office. The term comes from the old typesetting...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week’s top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link...
Cigarette use in teenagers fell by over 40 percent from 2011–2014, according to a survey the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FDA released this past month. That’s the good news.
The...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week’s top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link might...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week’s top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link might...
You may not understand why you dreamed about riding Bevo naked down Sixth Street last night, but neither do the best scientists in the field of
dream research.
Scientists have several theories on why...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week’s top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link might...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week’s top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link might...
With Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” hitting the top of the charts, it was only a matter of time before scientists looked into whether “boys like a little more booty to hold...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week’s top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link might...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week's top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link...
1920s stage performer Harry Kahne, “The Man with the Multiple Mind,” had an act in which he would write five words on a chalkboard simultaneously, using chalk in both hands, both feet and his...
Editor’s note: In this recurring column, science writer Robert Starr rounds up the previous week’s top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your link might...
Editor’s note: In this new recurring column, science writer Robert Starr will round up the previous week's top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and...
Editor’s note: In this new recurring column, science writer Robert Starr will round up the previous week's top science stories. Have a suggestion? Send a tweet to @RobertKStarr, and your...
When the “Are you still watching ‘Glee’?” message pops up on your TV after 10 straight hours of powering through the second season, it’s hard not to think Netflix is judging...
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series on blood donations. The first installment focused on what happens during the blood donation process. The second focuses on what happens to blood...
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series on blood donations. The second installment, which focuses on what happens to blood after it has been donated, will run in the paper tomorrow.
Doctors...
A 2012 Huffington Post article named UT the number one “Most Sexually Liberated College” in the country. While this distinction has yet to make it into the Longhorn promotional materials for...
As a child, Yoel Stuart played with snakes. Now as a postdoctoral researcher at UT, he plays with anole lizards as a scientist.
A recent study he worked on has received a lot of attention after his...
With the iOS 8 update this week, UT students can now use their new iPhones to purchase snacks at vending machines across campus, and this is in addition to the set of features that allows owners to communicate...
ACL kicked off with a bang last weekend and will conclude this weekend with its raucous embodiment of the “work hard, play hard” UT mentality. In our world of Spotify, earbuds and iPhones,...
When classes are graded on a curve, friends can turn to foes. Two students can study together, but there’s often still an element of distrust. When one of the students tells another a piece of information,...
Of all the myths that strike fear into incoming freshmen — hours of dry textbook reading, choosing the wrong major, ending up with a homicidal roommate — none inspire more terror than the dreaded “Freshman...
From love letters hesitantly passed across middle school classrooms to cryptic prescriptions scrawled by doctors, handwriting has long been overanalyzed. Statements like, “Look at the way he...
The average social media stream as of late has been overrun with people, across all ages, genders and backgrounds, taking the “ice bucket challenge.” The specifics of the challenge vary, but...
Back in 2010, Austin was home to the Ultimate Typing Championship, where the winner, Sean Wrona, typed an extremely difficult passage full of unusual symbols and punctuation with an average speed of 124...
“Write drunk; edit sober” is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, even though he never said it. Still, there may be something to the sentiment. Hemingway was certainly known for his indulgences...
Science doesn’t need to justify itself. Much like climbing Mount Everest because it was there, there’s a solid amount of research that was done just because the scientists could. A stand out...
After a tough winter full of snow, ice, thunder, sleet and other weather phenomena we didn’t know existed, Austin has finally made it to summertime. With day after day of 90+ degree weather...
“Be careful what you click” — so begins the first lesson of Internet browsing. That link from a friend could very well be exactly what she says it is, but, then again, it might not be....
While we, the humans, may sit in awe on Fourth of July, admiring the rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air, many dogs don’t feel the same patriotism. It’s not difficult to see...
Babies yawn. Animals yawn. In a way, fish yawn, and so do fetuses, though there’s some debate on the subject. You yawn when you’re bored in class or when you’re tired at the end of a...
For whatever flaws “Orange Is the New Black” may have had during the first season — and there weren’t many — the diversity and energy of the cast weren’t among them....
Final exams are almost here, which means it’s time to choose between sacrificing either sleep or study time, unless there’s some way to combine the two. Maybe, just maybe, if you listen to...
In 1971, Martha McClintock published a pilot study in Nature science journal as a sole author. This is an impressive feat, even for tenured professors, but she pulled it off as an undergraduate. The...
If you walked around Western Washington University during the spring of 2009, you might have noticed a clown unicycling around the plaza.
But, then again, you might not have.
The clown was...
The jazz legend Charlie “Bird” Parker once told an interviewer that he put in at least 11 to 15 hours a day on his saxophone for more than three years. That is more than the 10,000 hours writer...
A study published in the now defunct Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results featured researchers showing several pictures of people interacting to a subject who sat inside an fMRI machine that...
A runaway trolley heads down the tracks, aimed at five innocent bystanders. In front of you lies a switch. Pulling it diverts the trolley to another track, where it will only hit one person. You have five...
Everything in Australia is backward: Its winter is our summer, cars drive on the left side of the road, mammals lay eggs and toilets flush in the opposite direction.
Well, not quite on that last...
Feb. 12 of every year marks Darwin Day, a holiday celebrating the anniversary of the birth of the famous scientist who offered what is, arguably, the single greatest theory of modern times. Natural selection...
The triplewart seadevil can grow to 44 centimeters long, according to FishBase, but no male of the species exceeds 7.3 centimeters. The male finds a female seadevil, attaches himself to her and impregnates...
Upon first arrival, Austin can be something of a shock. A pleasant one, but not one without its little quirks that we put up with, like strange roads that never lead where one wants them to and intense...
The AIDS epidemic continues to devastate the world, particularly in Southern Africa, where the World Health Organization estimates that some countries have infection rates as high as 26 percent. Without...
Maybe these gifts are better asked for than given on a college budget.
Google Chromecast, Amazon.com, $35
When you’re spending time with your family, you might be stuck having...
In a 1971 study, experimenters asked a subject to rate paintings alongside a confederate who pretended to be part of the study. During a break, the confederate would leave and come back with two sodas,...
Fifty years ago, Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old high school dropout, brought a high-powered rifle up to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and with three shots, changed the course of...
Comparing yourself to others is a recipe for low self-esteem. There’s an illusion that comes from comparing ourselves to those around us and it’s not just psychological: It’s mathematical.
In...
The problem with most factoids is that they aren’t true. No, people don’t swallow eight spiders per year, NASA didn’t spend millions of dollars developing a pen that worked in space while...
