Tereza Magalhaes, Ph.D., is living an old, oft-used adage: “Science saves lives, one discovery at a time.”

Magalhaes, a vector biologist in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Entomology, grew up in Brazil in a family of scientists and academics, and she developed her natural interest in biology from an early age. Her aunt would tell Magalhaes she would be a detective one day.

It’s Tuesday morning in early June and the Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) control room is crawling with visitors. Men in fatigues thumb through logbooks, monitor radiation levels, and consult data and images on laptop computers. These visitors are members of the U.S. Army’s Nuclear Disablement Team (NDT), participating in a new Nuclear Infrastructure, Assessment and Disablement (NIAD) field exercise that validates and certifies training received during INL’s annual NIAD course. The annual course is designed to improve the soldier’s proficiency and knowledge of nuclear fuel cycle processes, hazard mitigation and successful characterization and disablement of nuclear facilities.

In many electricity markets, hydropower operators earn a significant portion of their revenue from the day-ahead market. In this market, utilities buy electricity based on expected demand for the next day, while power producers offer to sell electricity at prices based on forecasted production and demand. This process ensures that enough electricity is available to meet demand and helps stabilize prices by balancing supply and demand ahead of time.

Retail pork prices hit record high levels this summer and are expected to remain elevated heading into the holiday season, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service experts said.

In July, average retail pork prices reached the highest point of the year, $5.01 per pound, up from $4.92 a year ago, said David Anderson, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension livestock and food marketing economist and professor in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Department of Agricultural Economics, Bryan-College Station.

On the hills above Cornol in the canton of Jura, scientists are testing unusual new defences in the fight against the invasive Asian hornet (Vespa velutina): electric harps and hive “muzzles.”

The Asian hornet first arrived in southwestern France in 2004 and has since spread across much of Europe, including Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

The species is feared to pose a major threat to honey production, pollination services, biodiversity, and native hornet, bee, and wasp populations.

Texas A&M University engineers have created a “robot in an airbag" they call "RoboBall." This technology is built with plans to carry payloads such as sensors, cameras or sampling tools, for real-world missions.