At the 2026 Engineering Project Showcase, hundreds of student teams gathered in the Zachry Engineering Education Complex to present the results of months of work tackling current industry challenges. But for one team and one family, the event was a celebration of a life-changing medical advancement.

A recent study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (JNEB), published by Elsevier, examined how the cost of the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), which serves as the basis for determining maximum SNAP benefits, varied across geographic regions, metropolitan areas, and seasons from 2012 to 2018. Researchers found that where a household is located plays a much larger role in the cost of a healthy diet than year-to-year inflation.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary amid deep political division, a major new bipartisan report from the State of the Nation Project asks a fundamental question: How are we really doing as a country? The first-of-its-kind State of the States report analyzes more than three decades of data and 4,000 indicators across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., ranking states on 31 measures of well-being, trust, education, health, inequality, the economy and more. The findings point to an increasingly unhappy nation: Despite sharp political divides, red and blue states are facing many of the same struggles, including worsening mental health, declining trust, rising social isolation and falling life satisfaction. No state is improving on eight key measures, including life satisfaction, adult and youth depression, fatal overdoses, trust in the federal government, income inequality, long-term unemployment and hourly earnings growth.

With Texas quickly becoming a global hub for quantum innovation, Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed Jeff Prevost, PhD, executive director of UT San Antonio’s Open Cloud Institute, to the newly established Texas Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee. 

A citizen science project developed by ITQB NOVA and the Municipality of Oeiras has been awarded the Excellence in Public Engagement with Science Award.