College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin on LinkedIn: Insider Insights: Corinne Floyd (2024)

🐸 The Bigger the Toes, the Higher They Go 🐸Edmund Basham, a Stengl-Wyer postdoctoral scholar at The University of Texas at Austin, along with an international team of researchers from Gabon, USA, Canada and China, discovered that amphibians with larger toes relative to the length of their bodies were more likely to be found in the higher parts of the tree canopy.The discovery came about when Basham set out to study how this diverse group of amphibians sorted themselves in the vertical ecosystem, conducting the first amphibian survey of its kind in Central Africa. The team used ropes and climbing gear to ascend nearly 100 feet above the forest floor, mostly at night, to collect frogs and toads for study.Learn more about the research and watch a 25-minute documentary Basham made about the expedition at txsci.net/BigToes.Photo 1: Leptopelis boulengeri, commonly known as the Victoria Forest Tree Frog. Photo 2: Phlyctimantis leonardi, commonly known as the olive striped frog. Photo 3: Hyperolius mosaicus, commonly known as the South Cameroon reed frog. All photos are by Ed Basham#TexasScience #Herpetology #RainForest #UTAustin #Gabon #CongoBasin

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🎉 Congrats to Jason McLellan on the 2024 Award for Innovation in Healthcare and Bioscience from BioMedSA.

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Two years ago, most folks had never heard of large language models, like ChatGPT. Now all the cool kids are using them. How did LLMs get so good so fast? When will they be smarter than us? And how do we avoid their downsides? Listen here: txsci.net/RiseOfTheLLMs#TexasAI #YearofAI #Podcast #AIForTheRestOfUs #LLMThe University of Texas at Austin - College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas at Austin

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Michael Rose, director of The University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Electrochemistry, answers five questions about practical applications for electrochemistry, his work bridging chemistry and physics to discover new materials, common misconceptions about #electrochemistry and more.

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The impact of extreme weather affects beloved insects like the monarch butterfly, the official Texas state insect and recent addition to the IUCN’s endangered species list.Extreme weather can also influence behavior for less charismatic bugs that sometimes qualify as pests, such as the soapberry bug, which some scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have studied in conjunction with environmental events like hurricanes.Click below to learn more about the effect that extreme weather can have on insects from researchers like UT entomologist JoAnn Holley, discover how you can help these essential members of the ecosystem and watch our latest Nexus Point video with postdoctoral researcher Nikunj Goel revealing how a curious insect observation following a hurricane in Houston has sparked a new concept in evolution.#TexasScience #UTAustin #ExtremeWeather #Entomology #MonarchButterfly #SoapberryBug

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The Giant Magellan Telescope, under construction in Chile, has reached another key milestone. Read more about it in this press release from the McDonald Observatory: https://lnkd.in/gBRt_S5C

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“The most important advice that I’d give to an incoming student is to try to take advantage of all the resources at UT.”Mathematics major Shankar Padmanabhan reveals how the math major is one of the most flexible majors you can have, remarks on the collaborative and caring community he found in math and offers advice on how to get the most out of your time at The University of Texas at Austin.Shankar studies natural language processing in an effort to better understand when and how language models learn from data. His ultimate goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the foundations of intelligence. In pursuit of this, he has worked with faculty in the Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin, on developing methods that enable language models such as ChatGPT to be lifelong learners. Learn more about Shankar at https://lnkd.in/gGyG59aF.Insider Insights highlights stories from students who, after years in the college, have tips for our newer students.#CNSInsiderInsights #UTOrientation #TexasScience #LivingTheLonghornLife #TexasScience28 #UT28

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Kudos to UT neuroscientist Michela Marinelli on earning a Rigor Champions Prize from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) for scientific transparency through her course Analytical Skepticism!

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