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With tiny 1-inch long jaws, a new species of plant-eater has come to light in rocks in South Africa dating to the early dinosaur era, some 200 million years ago.

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The award-winning international exhibition “Transcending Tradition: Jewish Mathematicians in German-Speaking Academic Culture,” will be on display at the University of Chicago’s Crerar Library from Oct. 4 to Dec. 18.

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A team of researchers that includes William T.M. Irvine, assistant professor in physics at the University of Chicago, has succeeded in creating a defect in the structure of a single-layer crystal by simply inserting an extra particle, and then watching as the crystal “heals” itself.

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Moving from a high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhood spurs long-term gains in the physical and mental health of low-income adults, as well as a substantial increase in their happiness, despite not improving economic self-sufficiency, according to a new study.

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A dictionary of thousands of words chronicling the everyday lives of people in ancient Egypt — including what taxes they paid, what they expected in a marriage and how much work they had to do for the government — has been completed. The ancient language is Demotic Egyptian, a name given by the Greeks to denote it was the tongue of the demos, or common peopl

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R. Stephen Berry, Joshua Jortner and Stuart Rice will delve into deep and difficult scientific questions at a Sept. 13-17 conference in their honor at the University of Chicago’s Kent Chemical Laboratory building. The “240 Conference” will mark the 80th birthdays of the three chemistry scholars.

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Although the federal government’s 1996 reform of welfare brought some improvements for the nation’s poor, it also may have made extremely poor Americans worse off, new research shows. Welfare has become more difficult to obtain for families at the very bottom, who often have multiple barriers to work. As a result the deeply poor are doing worse.

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Many high-achieving students experience math anxiety at a young age — a problem that can follow them throughout their lives. In a study of first- and second-graders, researchers found that students report worry and fear about doing math as early as first grade. Most surprisingly math anxiety harmed the highest-achieving students.

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Grandparents, an increasingly important source of child care in the United States, vary greatly in the kind of care they provide. A new study shows that 60 percent of grandparents provided some care for their grandchildren during a 10-year period, and 70 percent of those who did provided care for two years or more.

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Analysis of data from the National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope, for the first time, more precisely defines the period of cosmological evolution when the first stars and galaxies formed and gradually illuminated the universe.

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University of Chicago scientists helped lead the search for the crucial particle. After the Large Hadron Collider’s discovery, what’s next?

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The Institute for Molecular Engineering has appointed artist and innovator Nancy Kawalek to create and develop new theater work inspired by science and technology, as part of the University of Chicago’s continuing commitment to fostering artistic and scientific collaborations across campus.

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The U.S. Census Bureau should reconsider income-based poverty measures in favor of a consumption-based method, according to a new study that strives to more accurately identify the neediest Americans.

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The discovery of a giant galaxy cluster made with the National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope may force astronomers to rethink how these colossal structures, and the galaxies that inhabit them, evolve.

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A bonus payment to teachers can improve student academic performance — but only when it is given upfront, on the condition that part of the money must be returned if student performance fails to improve, research at the University of Chicago shows.

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As part of an ambitious plan to recruit outstanding theoretical physicists from around the world, the University of Chicago has appointed Dam Thanh Son as University Professor in Physics, effective Sept. 1.

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Fears of terrorism in Europe and the United States have deteriorated into an irrational suspicion of Muslims, which will continue until the West turns its critical eye inward.

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A new study by the University of Chicago, in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools and local nonprofits Youth Guidance and World Sport Chicago, provides rigorous scientific evidence that a violence reduction program succeeded in creating a sizable decline in violent crime arrests among youth who participated in group counseling and mentoring.

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Most people buy cornstarch to make custard or gravy, but Scott Waitukaitis and Heinrich Jaeger have used it to solve a longstanding physics problem with a substance known to generations of Dr. Seuss readers as “Oobleck,” and to scientists as a non-Newtonian liquid.

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A newly published article in Physical Review Letters eliminates one of the top unsolved theoretical problems in chemical physics as ranked by the National Research Council in 1995.

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The Large Hadron Collider’s two experimental research collaborations at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory in Geneva, will announce the latest results in their search for the Higgs boson at 2 a.m. CDT Wednesday, July 4. University of Chicago physicists will be available to comment on the new findings.

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A new study indicates that mass extinctions affect the pace of evolution, not just in the immediate aftermath of catastrophe, but for millions of years to follow. The study will appear in the August issue of the journal Geology.

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Civic leaders, arts organizations, donors and government officials can better plan new or expanded arts facilities by first focusing on the arts organizations’ missions and assessing demand for the projects, according to a new study that looks at a major building boom in the United States from 1994 to 2008.

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A study shows that contrary to the traditional notion of a technological digital divide, substantial numbers of young people across racial and ethic groups are engaging in “participatory politics” — acts such as starting a political group online, circulating a blog about a political issue, or forwarding political videos to friends.

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Test performance can improve dramatically if students are offered rewards just before they are given standardized tests and if they receive the incentive immediately afterward, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

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The University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering is making its first set of new faculty appointments, bringing in world-leading research programs at the interfaces between molecular-level science and powerful new technologies.

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Globus Online, the software-as-a-service for secure, reliable data movement developed by the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, was named the recipient of an R&D 100 Award.

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Children who are skilled in understanding how shapes fit together to make recognizable objects also have an advantage when it comes to learning the number line and solving math problems. The work is further evidence of the value of providing young children with early opportunities in spatial learning, which helps them mentally manipulate objects.

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Since he arrived on campus as a first-year in 2008, Louis Wasserman has brought leadership to a group of ambitious computer programmers who, with his help has made the University of Chicago more competitive in global programing contests.

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A multi-institutional research team has used a new technique to map 5-methylcytosine and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine in DNA from human and mouse embryonic stem cells, revealing new information about their patterns of distribution. These DNA modifications play major roles in fundamental life processes.

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Undocumented Latino youth in the U.S. face futures clouded by fewer rights than their documented peers and the constant fear of deportation. Such status constraints usually aren’t fully understood until young adulthood, according to research that points out the awareness often serves as a catalyst for political and civic involvement.

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Visitors to the World Science Festival will get a taste of the South Pole Telescope when a traveling exhibit comes their way beginning May 30 to June 3 in New York City, including the June 3 World Science Street Festival in Washington Square Park.

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In a study with implications for businesspeople in a global economy, researchers at the University of Chicago have found that people make more rational decisions when they think through a problem in a non-native tongue. People are more likely to take favorable risks if they think in a foreign language, the new study showed.

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The University of Waterloo from Ontario, Canada, took the first-place gold medal and a $4,500 cash prize in the University of Chicago Invitational Programming Contest last weekend. Waterloo solved nine of 10 possible problems in 1,528 minutes.

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Awardees of the University of Chicago’s 2012 Arts | Science Graduate Collaboration Grants will present the results of their projects from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 26, in the Performance Penthouse of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.. The event is free and open to the public.

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International surveys about the depth of people’s belief in God reveal vast differences among nations, ranging from 94 percent of people in the Philippines who said they always believed in God, compared to only 13 percent of people in the former East Germany. Belief in God is higher among older people, regardless of where they live.

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Computer programming teams from across North America will compete for $12,000 in prize money, including a $4,500 grand prize, at the University of Chicago Invitational Programming contest April 14 and 15.

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World-renowned artists to discuss philosophy and practice of comics at May 18-20 event.

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In a discovery that could help instructors better teach deaf children, a team of University of Chicago researchers has found that a gesture-sign mismatch made while explaining a math problem suggests that a deaf child is experiencing a teachable moment.

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Analysis of data from the 10-meter South Pole Telescope is providing new support for the most widely accepted explanation of dark energy — the source of the mysterious force that is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe.

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Complex organic compounds, including many important to life on Earth, were readily produced under conditions that likely prevailed in the primordial solar system. Scientists came to this conclusion after linking computer simulations to laboratory experiments.

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Stir lots of small particles into water, and the resulting thick mixture appears highly viscous. When this dense suspension slips through a nozzle and forms a droplet, however, its behavior momentarily reveals a decidedly non-viscous side.

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A new chemical analysis of lunar material collected by Apollo astronauts in the 1970s conflicts with the widely held theory that a giant collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object gave birth to the moon 4.5 billion years ago.

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Human nature has deep evolutionary roots and is manifested in relationships with family members, friends, romantic and business partners, competitors, and strangers more than in any other aspects of behavior or intellectual activity. It is in party genetically controlled and evolves by natural selection, contends a behavioral biologist.

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University of Chicago physicists have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that atoms chilled to temperatures near absolute zero may behave like seemingly unrelated natural systems of vastly different scales, offering potential insights into links between the atomic realm and deep questions of cosmology.

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Thanks to the presence of a natural “zoom lens” in space, University of Chicago scientists working with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a uniquely close-up look at the brightest gravitationally magnified galaxy yet discovered.

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The Friday brown bag luncheons of UChicago’s Materials Research Center have acquired their own mystique under the stewardship of physicist Thomas Witten. These seminars, which emphasize questions, not answers, have become a mainstay of intellectual life in the center and the James Franck Institute.

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This year a series of events around the world will celebrate the work of Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, as the 100th anniversary of his birthday approaches on June 23. Mathematician Robert Soare now proposes that Turing’s achievement was artistic as well as scientific.

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Children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 later develop better spatial skills, a study by University of Chicago researchers has found. Puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of cognition after controlling for differences in parents’ income, education and the overall amount of parent language input.

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Fossil record of graptoloids challenges the theory that immediately after a mass extinction, species develop new physical traits at a rapid pace.