Latest News

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Utah (the U) selected Bryan Ritchie to be the next director of its Technology Commercialization Office (TCO.) Ritchie joins the U from James Madison College, a residential college that is part of Michigan State University, where he served as a professor of political economy with a focus on international relations, director of the Michigan State Entrepreneur Network, and co-director of the Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity.

• share
• favorite_border

University launches 23 companies, collects 233 inventions disclosures, signs 81 licenses and engages over 2,400 students in fiscal year 2011.

• share
• favorite_border

Over the past decade the University of Utah’s Lassonde Entrepreneur Center, once just a crazy idea to bring business and science students together, has become one of the most successful student entrepreneurial centers in the country.

• share
• favorite_border

Life is tough for woodrats in deserts. The few food plants produce poison. A new University of Utah study shows how some woodrats put themselves on a diet to avoid poisoning: They eat smaller meals, increase time between meals and drink more water if it is available.

• share
• favorite_border

Results of a new survey of 525 college student veterans show rates of thinking of and attempting suicide are much higher than for college students in general.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah scientists used chemical isotopes in ancient soil to measure prehistoric tree cover – in effect, shade – and found that grassy, tree-dotted savannas prevailed at most East African sites where human ancestors and their ape relatives evolved during the past 6 million years.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Utah has opened doors -- literally and figuratively -- at the new Veterans Support Center, which will serve as a focal point for student veteran activities and help recently deployed veterans transition into the sometimes unnerving world of civilian life.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Utah will be the first location in the U.S. to install a new solar power product called Solar Ivy, for its wall-climbing appearance, thanks to a student funded initiative to make the U a more sustainable campus.

• share
• favorite_border

Whether bullying takes place on a Web site or at school, educators are forced to deal with its effects on a daily basis. Experts from across the U.S. will meet at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City July 13-15 to address bullying at a national conference for school teachers, administrators and parents.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute describe a new approach to organize large amounts of varied genetic data, allowing researchers to create 3-D models revealing previously unknown relationships among different cancer genes.

• share
• favorite_border

The new Nine Line linear park and urban trail on an unused railway corridor will connect two of Salt Lake’s most diverse neighborhoods, a creative example of urban revitalization and cooperation.

• share
• favorite_border

Veritract, a University of Utah startup company, is developing a “Smart Feeding Tube” with a live camera and steering mechanism that enables doctors to place feeding tubes with much more accuracy than current technology allows. The company has just received $820,000 in an early round of funding.

• share
• favorite_border

Christopher Hacon, a University of Utah mathematician, has been awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize in Mathematics, Mechanics and Applications by Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, or National Lincean Academy.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time ever, all three student projects from one of the University of Utah's computer game development classes have been accepted for sale on Xbox Live Indie Games, an online computer game store for the Xbox 360 console.

• share
• favorite_border

In “The Evidence for Evolution,” University of Utah anthropologist Alan R. Rogers tries to lay to rest persistent and inaccurate anti-evolution arguments with scientific evidence that was unavailable in Charles Darwin’s day.

• share
• favorite_border

From IT to lfe sciences and renewable energy, students gain strategic foothold through hands-on product development, commercialization experience

• share
• favorite_border

A University of Utah study shows that men hit hardest when they stand on two legs and punch downward, giving tall, upright males a fighting advantage. This may help explain why our ape-like human ancestors began walking upright and why women tend to prefer tall men.

• share
• favorite_border

Compared with other mothers, women who deliver twins live longer, have more children than expected, bear babies at shorter intervals over a longer time, and are older at their last birth, according to a University of Utah study.

• share
• favorite_border

Less than a year after launching its one-of-a-kind Medical Accelerator, the University of Utah is graduating its first research-based company from the facility. The company is Catheter Connections, which produces a device that protects patients from infection during IV infusion therapy.

• share
• favorite_border

For decades, an early human relative nicknamed Nutcracker Man because of his big, flat molars and powerful jaw. But a new University of Utah study shows Nutcracker Man didn’t eat nuts -- a discovery that upsets conventional wisdom about early humanity’s diet.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah psychologists have learned why many people experience “inattention blindness” – the phenomenon that leaves drivers on cell phones prone to traffic accidents and makes a gorilla invisible to viewers of a famous video.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah geophysicists made the first large-scale picture of the electrical conductivity of the plume of partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano. The image suggests the plume is bigger than it appears in earlier images made with earthquake waves.

• share
• favorite_border

Fossil teeth of African animals show that during the past 10 million years, different plant-eating critters began grazing on grass at different times as many switched from a salad-bar diet of tree leaves and shrubs, says a University of Utah study.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah scientists used infrared light to make heart cells contract and inner-ear cells signal the brain. The discovery might improve cochlear implants for deafness and lead to devices to restore vision, maintain balance and treat movement disorders.

• share
• favorite_border

A new report by the University of Utah’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) concludes that the economic impacts of startup companies at the university are “significant and impressive.”

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah researchers built "spintronic" transistors to align the "spins" of electrons for a record time in silicon chips at room temperature -- a step toward computers and other spintronic devices that are faster and use less energy than electronic counterparts.

• share
• favorite_border

Seismology, geophysics, civil engineering and nuclear power experts at the University of Utah are available for comment and questions about today’s earthquake in Japan and its potential aftermath.

• share
• favorite_border

The risk of deadly hantavirus outbreaks can be predicted using satellite images to monitor surges in vegetation that boost mouse populations, a University of Utah study says. The method also might forecast outbreaks of other rodent-borne illnesses.

• share
• favorite_border

For two months, researchers launched weather balloons, drove instrument-laden cars and flew a glider to study winter inversions that often trap dirty air in Salt Lake City and other urban basins worldwide. The field campaign – part of a study led by the University of Utah – ends Feb. 7.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah researchers developed a new concept in water treatment: an electrobiochemical reactor in which a low electrical voltage is applied to microbes to help them quickly and efficiently remove pollutants from mining, industrial and agricultural wastewater.

• share
• favorite_border

The University of Utah overtook MIT to become America’s No. 1 research institution when it comes to creating startup companies based on university technology, and it achieved the top ranking with a fraction of the research budget of other major universities.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah physicists stored data for 112 seconds in what may become the tiniest computer memory: “spins” in the atomic nuclei. Then they read the data electrically – a step toward using spin memory for faster conventional and superfast “quantum” computers.

• share
• favorite_border

Four years after the LouseBuster prototype made headlines when research showed the chemical-free, warm-air device wiped out head lice on children, a new study reveals that a revamped, government-cleared model is highly effective.

• share
• favorite_border

The UofU library provides an audio journey to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge--a unique preserve of American wilderness--in commemoration of its 50th anniversary.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah computer scientists developed software that quickly edits huge photographs. Until now, it took hours to process these “gigapixel” images. The new software needs only seconds to produce preview images useful to doctors, intelligence analysts, photographers, engineers and others.

• share
• favorite_border

The run-up to the midterm elections has produced many surprises, even in the state of Utah. Political experts at the U of U are available to shed light on a range of issues involving races in the state, the West and across the country.

• share
• favorite_border

If all goes well during a demonstration project in China, University of Utah microbubble technology may boost many environmental cleanups, including removing oil byproducts from water, organics and heavy metals from industrial sites and harmful algae from lakes.

• share
• favorite_border

If drivers yak on cell phones and don’t hear instructions to turn left or right, they still can get directions from devices that are mounted on the steering wheel and pull the driver’s fingertips left or right, a University of Utah study found.

• share
• favorite_border

New discoveries in southern Utah "dinosaur boneyard" reveal giant horned plant-eaters, one with 15 horns, showing different species in same groupings existed at the same time.

• share
• favorite_border

In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.

• share
• favorite_border

A paycheck brings a familiar sense of freedom, albeit one that dwindles in lockstep with the balance in one's checking account. But, it’s not the checking account size that influences consumer behavior; rather, it’s the time that has elapsed since payday.

• share
• favorite_border

A magnitude-8.1 earthquake and tsunami that killed 192 people last year in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga actually was a triple whammy: The 8.1 “great earthquake” concealed and triggered two magnitude-7.8 quakes.

• share
• favorite_border

U of U study on walkability shows that planning matters, but also that students’ and parents’ views of safety can differ and influence transportation choices

• share
• favorite_border

Wielding two claws, a motor and a swinging tail, a small robot scrambles up a carpeted, 8-foot wall in just over 15 seconds – the first such robot designed to climb efficiently and move like human rock climbers or apes swinging through trees.

• share
• favorite_border

In tough times, many companies slash staff and turn to outsourcing, yet that may doom their products; in good times, as with Toyota, losing control over key components can contribute to failure, says Lyda Bigelow, a University of Utah business-strategy professor.

• share
• favorite_border

To many big companies, you aren’t just a customer, but are described by multiple “dimensions” of information within a computer database. Now, a University of Utah computer scientist has devised a new method for simpler, faster “data mining,” or extracting and analyzing massive amounts of such data.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah researchers are using eye-tracking technology to pioneer a promising alternative to the polygraph for lie detection. The university recently licensed the technology to Credibility Assessment Technologies, of Park City.

• share
• favorite_border

Female zebra finches make one-note, low-pitch calls. Males sing over a wide range of frequencies. University of Utah scientists discovered how: The males’ stronger vocal muscles, not the pressure of air flowing through their lungs, lets them vary their pitch.

• share
• favorite_border

A purported human ancestor that was dubbed Science magazine’s 2009 Breakthrough of the Year is under fire from scientists who say there is scant evidence for claims that there were dense woods at the African site where the creature lived 4.4 million years ago.

• share
• favorite_border

Vehicle use affects everything from the environment to obesity. A study of commuter's travel choices by a U of U planner aims to make transportation decisions easier for those charged with designing cities that use less carbon in the future.