University of Chicago researchers in a new paper look to resolve a 15-year-old scientific dispute about how rats process odors. What they found not only settles that argument, it suggests an explanation for the much written-about replication crisis.
Scientists behind XENON1T, the largest dark matter experiment of its kind ever built, are encouraged by early results, describing them as the best so far in the search for dark matter.
A new study examines what young adults in Balaka, Malawi think about how anti-retroviral drugs are distributed amid an AIDS epidemic in the African nation.
Although scientists have been able to levitate specific types of material, a pair of UChicago undergraduate physics students helped take the science to a new level.
Third-year Frankie Fung and fourth-year Mykhaylo Usatyuk led a team of UChicago researchers who demonstrated how to levitate a variety of objects—ceramic and polyethylene spheres, glass bubbles, ice particles, lint strands and thistle seeds—between a warm plate and a cold plate in a vacuum chamber.
New research provides scientists looking at single molecules or into deep space a more accurate way to analyze imaging data captured by microscopes, telescopes and other devices.
The improved method for determining the position of objects captured by imaging systems is the result of new research by scientists at the University of Chicago. The findings, published Dec. 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides a mechanism—known as single-pixel interior filling function, or SPIFF—to detect and correct systematic errors in data and image analysis used in many areas of science and engineering.
Sian Beilock, the Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology, has been awarded the 2017 Troland Research Award for her pioneering work on anxiety and performance in high-stress situations.
The National Academy of Sciences gives the award annually to two investigators no older than 40 to recognize their unusual achievements and to further research in the field of experimental psychology. The honor is accompanied by a $75,000 prize.
For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven significantly by the additional force of heat drawn from the Earth’s core.
The new findings also challenge the theory that underwater mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges are passive boundaries between moving plates. The findings show the East Pacific Rise, the Earth’s dominant mid-ocean ridge, is dynamic as heat is transferred.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds parents who talk with their high schoolers about the relevance of science and math can increase competency and career interest in the fields.
The frequency of large-scale tornado outbreaks is increasing in the United States, particularly when it comes to the most extreme events, according to research recently published in Science.
New research by cosmologists at the University of Chicago and Wayne State University confirms the accuracy of Type Ia supernovae in measuring the pace at which the universe expands. The findings support a widely held theory that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and such acceleration is attributable to a mysterious force known as dark energy.
The earnings gap between African-American men and white men is the same now as it was 60 years ago for the median worker, according to a new study from economists at the University of Chicago and Duke University.
An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Chicago, has made the rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth’s sun. Especially intriguing is the star’s unusual composition, which indicates it ingested some of its planets.
An international collaboration between physicists at the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, McGill University, and the University of Konstanz recently demonstrated a new framework for faster control of a quantum bit. First published online Nov. 28, 2016, in Nature Physics, their experiments on a single electron in a diamond chip could create quantum devices that are less to prone to errors when operated at high speeds.
Biodiversity on earth is greatest in the tropics with the number and variety of species gradually diminishing toward the poles. Understanding exactly what shapes this pattern, known as the latitudinal diversity gradient, is not just key to knowing the nature of life on Earth, but it also could help scientists slow biodiversity loss and protect areas of the globe that generate a disproportionate variety of species.
Michael Greenstone, a leading economist and the Milton Friedman Professor at the University of Chicago, has been appointed director of the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.
The University of Chicago is designating $25 million from its endowment to invest alongside established venture funds in startups led by faculty, students, staff and alumni, expanding a commitment to grow entrepreneurship and research commercialization on campus.
In a new study, researchers at the University of Chicago explored whether mostly subconscious visual cues embedded in dilapidated buildings, overgrown lots and littered streets can fuel deviant behavior, reassessing the influential “broken windows” theory.
The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization on Nov. 16 announced the appointment of Walter E. Massey and Taft Armandroff to the positions of board chair and vice chair, respectively.
Understanding how carbon dissolves in water at the molecular level under extreme conditions is critical to understanding the Earth’s deep carbon cycle—a process that ultimately influences global climate change.
New research suggests scientists could eventually help create materials that resist breaking or crack in a predictable fashion.
Using both a simulation and artificial structures called metamaterials, scientists at the University of Chicago, New York University and Leiden University found material failure can be continuously tuned through changes in its underlying rigidity. The research, published Sept. 27 in PNAS, examined the effects of varying the rigidity of a material.
New research conducted at the University of Chicago has confirmed a decades-old theory describing the dynamics of continuous phase transitions.
The findings, published in the Nov. 4 issue of Science, provide the first clear demonstration of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for a quantum phase transition in both space and time. Prof. Cheng Chin and his team of UChicago physicists observed the transition in gaseous cesium atoms at temperatures near absolute zero.
Scientists at the University of Chicago, New York University and Leiden University could eventually help create materials that resist breaking or crack in a predictable fashion.
The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 27, were the result of experiments and computer simulations in which researchers examined the effects of varying the rigidity of a material. Using both a simulation and artificial structures called metamaterials, they found material failure can be continuously tuned through changes in its underlying rigidity.
It was while working in the Kent Laboratory building in the 1940s that Prof. Willard Libby and his UChicago associates developed radiocarbon dating—an innovative method to measure the age of organic materials. Scientists soon used the technique on materials ranging from the dung of a giant sloth from a Nevada cave; seaweed and algae from Monte Verde, Chile, the oldest archaeological site in the Western Hemisphere; the Shroud of Turin; and the meteorite that created the Henbury Craters in northern Australia.
How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it’s missing. That’s what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their collaborator did, and their explanation for where the mass went significantly changes prevailing ideas about what can happen when continents collide.
The University of Chicago is part of a collaboration that has been awarded $23 million by the National Science Foundation to increase the intensity of beams of charged particles, while lowering the costs of key accelerator technologies. This Science and Technology Center will contribute to scientific advances in many disciplines, including physics, chemistry and mathematics, by enhancing accelerator capabilities.
A group of scientists from the University of Chicago has developed an ingenious way to spur checkpoint blockade cancer immunotherapy into more potent action. The therapy offers the hope of an effective treatment for intractable metastatic cancers including those of the colon and lung.
In a novel test of the benefit a company can generate for consumers, a new study estimates just how much consumers are gaining from the technology company Uber, helping to explain the service’s popularity.
Chondrite meteorites contain a puzzling mismatch in isotopic composition with Earth’s crust. The mismatch puzzles scientists because they long believed that Earth formed from planetary objects similar to meteorites. A new paper in Nature explains how this mismatch could have come about.
A group of scientists at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering has found a way to exploit the ability of liquid crystals to flow like a liquid, but display the orderly molecular structure of a crystalline solid.
Community characteristics play an important role in perpetuating teen suicide clusters and thwarting prevention efforts, according to a new study by sociologists who examined clusters in a single town.
A new analysis published this week in Nature Geoscience by the University of Chicago’s Tiffany Shaw and others finds that human-induced climate change complicates projecting the future position of such storms.
James W. Cronin, a pioneering scientist who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1980 for his groundbreaking work on the laws governing matter and antimatter and their role in the universe, died Aug. 25 in Saint Paul, Minn. He was 84. Cronin, SM’53, PhD’55, spent much of his career at the University of Chicago, first as a student and then a professor.
A new study conducted at the University of Chicago finds infants develop expectations about what people prefer to eat, providing early evidence of the social nature through which humans understand food.
It isn’t often that a graduate student makes a spectacular technical leap in his field, or invents a process that can have a significant impact on a real-world problem. Di Liu did both.
To help veterans and military personnel transition into the academic world, the University of Chicago is participating in the Warrior-Scholar Project for the second year in a row.
One of the world’s hubs of computation in particle physics sits inconspicuously at the corner of 56th Street and Ellis Avenue on the University of Chicago campus.
High-energy physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, are hearing a bewitching siren song these days. They call it the 750 GeV bump: It could signal the existence of a new heavy particle—or it could be nothing.
Experience in trading changes how the human brain evaluates the sale of goods, muting a well-established economic bias known as the endowment effect, according to researchers at the University of Chicago.
A new partnership between UChicago STEM Education and the Magnetar Capital Foundation will expand access to financial education for high school students.
More than 1,350 physicists from around the world will converge in Chicago for the biennial International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in August to share new research results, announce new projects, and talk about the most intriguing mysteries of the universe.
The international Simons Collaboration on Cracking the Glass Problem aims to build upon recent theoretical advances to achieve a unified and general understanding of the glass transition.
Academic and industrial researchers have begun working side-by-side at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility, using some of the world’s most advanced tools to exploit the atomic and molecular properties of matter for emerging applications in science and technology.
University of Chicago economists find discounts tied to buying large quantities of virtual goods have little impact on profitability and do not increase the number of customers making purchases. The study comes from a field experiment of more than 14 million players of mobile games by King Digital Entertainment, maker of Candy Crush Saga.
Ideally, injectable or implantable medical devices should not only be small and electrically functional, they should be soft, like the body tissues with which they interact. Scientists from two UChicago labs set out to see if they could design a material with all three of those properties.
New calculations predict that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) will detect approximately 1,000 mergers of massive black holes annually once it achieves full sensitivity early next decade.
Egyptian pharaohs, who are remembered for their pyramids and temples, many of which remain as magnificent monuments to their civilization, were also the world’s first urban planners.
Interventions rooted in behavioral economics can significantly boost the use of fuel- and carbon-efficient flight practices in the airline industry, according to a study by economists at the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
University of Chicago scientists and their colleagues have developed an innovative computer model of HIV that gives real insight into how a virus “matures” and becomes infective.