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Vanderbilt students built a social media app to share knowledge and opinions about third wave coffee and coffee shops.

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Invention of the first integrated circularly polarized light detector on a silicon chip opens the door for development of small, portable sensors could expand the use of polarized light for drug screening, surveillance, etc.

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Immigration expert Robert Barsky describes the experiences of undocumented migrants, all around the world, bringing to life the challenges they face from the moment they consider leaving their country of origin, until the time they are deported back to it. Drawing on a broad array of academic studies, including law, interpretation and translation studies, border studies, human rights, communication, critical discourse analysis and sociology, Robert Barsky argues that the arrays of actions that are taken against undocumented migrants are often arbitrary, and exercised by an array of officials who can and do exercise considerable discretion, both positive and negative.

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Juries in criminal cases typically decide if someone is guilty, then a judge determines a suitable level of punishment. New research confirms that these two separate assessments of guilt and punishment – though related -- are calculated in different parts of the brain. In fact, researchers found that they can disrupt and change one decision without affecting the other. New work by researchers at Vanderbilt University and Harvard University confirms that a specific area of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is crucial to punishment decisions. Researchers predicted and found that by altering brain activity in this brain area, they could change how subjects punished hypothetical defendants without changing the amount of blame placed on the defendants.

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If terror strikes increase in the United States, some consumers will keep buying as they always have, but others will withdraw from certain markets to minimize their risk. Researchers say the key issue control. Does a person feel like her or she can control the odds of becoming a victim, should a terrorist attack occur?

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In the popular mind, mass extinctions are associated with catastrophic events, like giant meteorite impacts and volcanic super-eruptions. But the world’s first known mass extinction, which took place about 540 million years ago, now appears to have had a more subtle cause: evolution itself. “People have been slow to recognize that biological organisms can also drive mass extinction,” said Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University.

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New research shows that paying elected representatives more may result in better policies for voters.

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Race and education shape employment outcomes for U.S.- and foreign-born blacks in surprising ways.

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A Vanderbilt research team has successfully created a mechanical wrist less than 1/16th of an inch thick -- small enough to use in needlescopic surgery, the least invasive form of minimally invasive surgery.

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Applying mild electrical stimulation to an area of the brain associated with cognitive control helps people with schizophrenia recognize errors and adjust their behavior to avoid them.

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Vanderbilt chemists Brian Bachmann and John McLean have shown that creating bacterial "fight clubs" is an effective way to discover natural biomolecules with the properties required for new drugs.

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A new experiment shows that auditory melodies can enhance a musician's visual awareness of written music, particularly when the two match.

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A series of immersive virtual reality experiments has confirmed that the human brain’s internal navigation system works in the same fashion as the grid cell system recently found in other mammals.

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Shift changes and movements of patients between different parts of a hospital are vulnerable times when mistakes are made, and a study from Vanderbilt University offers suggestions to offset the risk.

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Vanderbilt biologist Laurence Zwiebel has received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant to create a wrist-band device that vaporizes a super-repellant thousands of times more powerful than DEET to create a personal no-fly zone" that protects people from mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects.