Visas Revoked
At least three Baylor students have had their student immigration status terminated in the government database known as SEVIS, according to a University press release and reported by Baptist News Global. Baylor is among a few faith-based private universities affected by the unannounced revocations, but the Associated Press reports “At least 901 students at more than 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated in recent weeks.”
Debunking Digital Dementia
A meta-analysis of 57 studies on 411,430 older adults by Baylor researcher Dr. Michael Scullin and Dr. Jared Benge of UT Health Austin’s Comprehensive Memory Center found that adults over 50 who routinely used digital devices had lower rates of cognitive decline than those who used them less–challenging commonly held beliefs about “brain rot, brain drain, and digital dementia.”
This one is personal for me–if you’ve been keeping up, you know I worked on a memory study in Dr. Scullin’s lab prior to becoming editor-in-chief at The Line. I watched Drs. Scullin and Benge pour into this paper for over a year to finally have it published in Nature Human Behavior, and I was able to see firsthand how this novel view of dementia care impacted patients and study participants.
P.S. Are you noticing memory changes? If so, you may be interested in joining Dr. Scullin’s current study investigating smartphone-based and paper-based calendar interventions in adults over 50 years old. Contact memorystudy@baylor.edu for more info!
Baylor Knows Batteries
I can definitely break down dementia research for you, but nanoscale-level electrical engineering on batteries is another story. Dr. Jonathan M. Larson, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, presented his groundbreaking research technique for chemical and structural insights that can influence the future of energy storage, on April 10 at the Volta Foundation Battery Forum.
“Batteries are engineered with carefully designed bulk materials, even down to microscale precision, yet key performance limitations often arise from hidden interfacial processes that occur at the nanoscale – leading to an immense need for new methods that can sense such processes,” Larson said in a Baylor release.
Championship Season
Women’s golf opened the Big 12 Championship Tuesday morning, coming off of a fourth-place finish in last year’s conference tournament. The team finished No. 12 at the tournament on Wednesday. The men’s golf Big 12 Championship kicks off next Tuesday.
The Hurd Tennis Center is the site of the Big 12 Tennis Championship this year. The facility will also house the NCAA D1 Tennis Championships May 15-18. Tickets for this weekend’s matches, as well as the NCAA championship matches, are on sale here.
The No. 16 men’s tennis team earned the No. 3 seed for the Big 12 Championship, which began on Thursday at the Hurd Tennis Center. The Bears will make their tournament debut in the quarterfinal round on Friday against Arizona State, and with a win could either play No. 2 seed Arizona or No. 7 seed Texas Tech in Saturday’s semifinal.
The No. 21 women’s tennis team is seeded No. 4 heading into its quarterfinal match on Friday. The Bears will face either 12th-seeded Utah or 5th-seeded Arizona.
Keep up with both brackets here.
The No. 1 acrobatics and tumbling team earned the top seed for the 2025 NCATA Championship taking place from April 24-27. The team, which won its first national title as a program in 2015, looks to win its 10th straight national title.
Plus, stay tuned next week for The Baylor Line’s featured coverage of one of the team’s greatest athletes, Kiara Nowlin.
Rebuilding the Bears
Things haven’t looked so great for all of Baylor’s sports teams this week–the men’s basketball team has officially lost every player from last year’s roster either by transfer, graduation, or draft.
Per OutKick: “In a perfect example of just how absurd college sports have become with NIL deals, transfer portals and the like, the entire Baylor men’s basketball team from last year is no longer with the team. … You’re talking about this happening to a team that literally won the NCAA Championship in 2021!” Read OutKick’s article for more fan reactions.
But the Bears are rebuilding their roster. So far, the team has added Waco native Caden Powell from Rice, Dan Skillings from Cincinnati, High Point’s Juslin Bodo Bodo, Omaha’s JJ White, Michael Rataj from Oregon State, and Obi Agbim from Wyoming to its roster for next year.
