Planet Texas 2050 researcher and LBJ School of Public Affairs environmental policy expert Patrick Bixler joins Texas Public Radio's The Source to talk about energy reform, climate change and environment-related bills the Texas Legislature is taking up this session.

Karen Johnson, an associate professor in the School of Nursing and Whole Communities–Whole Health researcher, shares her experience administering COVID-19 vaccinations.

Karen Johnson, who is a public health nurse, an associate professor in the School of Nursing and a Whole Communities–Whole Health researcher, says she felt powerless to do anything to help amid the pandemic as patients were overflowing critical care units. So when she got the email about the vaccine, she was the first to sign up to volunteer.

The School of Nursing launched two vaccination delivery programs in March that provide vaccines to underserved Austin communities. The two programs, Vaccine Administration Mobile Operations (VAMOS), which is co-sponsored by Whole Communities–Whole Health, and Vaccinate, No Waste (VaxNow), were created by people working in vaccine operations after they realized some Austin communities could not access UT’s mass vaccination hub.

Natural environments seldom follow political borders. While sometimes arbitrary lines on a map separate states, natural environments shape the way people live. Mexican American and Latino/a Studies Assistant Professor C.J. Alvarez explores the identities of what he calls “desert dwellers” and how the Chihuahuan shapes and defines them.

Borders today are understood as political demarcations that separate states and nation-states. But, sometimes, we share more in common with the people beyond these arbitrary lines than we think.

Using publicly available data, researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering and Whole Communities–Whole Health have quantified the many ways day-to-day activity has changed since the pandemic began, including real estate activity, traffic, retail spending and job postings.

This week, UT researchers, including experts from Whole Communities–Whole Health, released a new online dashboard measuring all the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has changed life in Austin, including transportation, small business revenue and the housing market.

As part of the Institute for Historical Studies' "Climate in Context" events, Planet Texas 2050 has teamed up with the digital magazine "Not Even Past" to produce a series of articles outlining why history and archaeology are important to our understanding and mitigation of the effects of climate change. This article by Classics Associate Professor Adam Rabinowitz details his work exploring the ancient past to help plan for the future.

Researchers at UT Austin have been working on a project using advanced modeling to predict when certain electrical substations will be thrown offline during an extreme weather event. The goal is to help design a better, more resilient system by assisting energy companies, policymakers and state agencies in planning infrastructure investments during the next decade. The team has been focused on flooding from major hurricanes, but now, they are considering how the model could be tweaked to improve the state’s power grid in the face of a winter storm