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Preventing undersea oil pipeline leaks
Oliviero Andreussi's virtual organic chemistry laboratory may hold the key to safeguarding our oceans. He is testing compounds that will either increase or decrease the formation of natural gas hydrates, crystalline structures made of gas molecules trapped in a cage of water molecules. The increase and decrease of these natural gas hydrates could be used as various environmental protection solutions from preventing undersea oil pipeline breaks to storing greenhouse gases.
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 Discovering the secret of longevity in Ginkgo biloba trees
Richard Dixon, Distinguished Research Professor and Associate Director of UNT's BioDiscovery Institute, is making headlines worldwide with his stunning research into the longevity of the Ginkgo biloba tree. Dixon and a team of scientists at the Beijing Forestry University in China found that these trees, unlike animals, other plants and even other trees, aren't programmed to die and, unless acted upon by an outside force, could live forever. The research was published in January's Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
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| Securing health care devices |
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The Bluetooth or Wi-Fi capability of some medical appliances such as insulin pumps and pacemakers leaves them open to hackers and puts users in possible danger. Saraju Mohanty, professor of computer science and engineering at UNT, and fellow researchers Elias Kougianos and Elias Mpofu, pictured from left, recently received a National Science Foundation grant to research cybersecurity for implantable and wearable medical devices (IWMDs) such as these to make them safer.
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| Recognizing top science and math scholars |
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For their research projects addressing nanoparticle cancer treatments, sensors for single-molecule imaging technology and artificial intelligence neural networks, three seniors from UNT's Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science were recently named among the top 300 scholars in the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation's oldest and most prestigious science and math competition. Eunyoung (Lucy) Kim and Nikhil Vicas, both of Coppell, along with Abhishek Joshi of Frisco, pictured left to right, were selected from an international applicant pool of nearly 2,000 students.
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| Creating first cyber knowledge bank for open access books |
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UNT is leading a team with members from around the world to create an international data trust, improving the measurement and analysis of open access book usage. The new data trust, funded through a $1.2 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will be the first of its kind for scholarly publishing, enabling universities and publishers to share and analyze data on open access works. As a pioneer for open access, UNT was the first public institution in Texas to adopt a policy in support of open access and has hosted an annual Open Access Symposium since 2010.
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| Lifting voices of young children through photography |
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UNT College of Education assistant professor Tran Nguyen Templeton is helping children express their understanding of the world and how they fit into it through photography even before they can write. Images, such as the one of Templeton taken by a child accompanying this story, are a form of early literacy. She sends 2- to 5-year-olds in Denton classrooms home with digital cameras to take photos and later collects their explanations on which images are most important along with noting the differences in what they tell their friends versus what they tell her about the photos. "It's about how they are communicating their different selves in different spaces," Templeton says, noting the effect is similar to the curating that teens and adults do on social media platforms.
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