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Liu’s research expands, connects autonomous vehicle capabilities

A University of Nebraska–Lincoln research project aims to transform how autonomous vehicles operate by connecting them to broader networks, making them smarter and more reliable.

Husker researchers studying fungus that could be melanin resource

Several years ago, Erin Carr’s doctoral adviser Steven Harris handed her bags of soil collected from the soil crust of a cold British Columbian desert. She went to work on it, suspending it in liquid, plating it onto a growth medium and treating it with antibiotics and antifungals. Then, she replated the tiny black dots that emerged.

Those dots turned out to be a novel fungus — Exophiala viscosa, though Carr dubbed it Goopy — that may just be a resource for large-scale, cost-effective production of melanin, with applications in ultraviolet-protective products and advanced materials for aerospace and other industries.