The grant allows scientists, Navajo Nation government officials, educators and students to collaborate on a study looking at the effectiveness of the Healthy Diné Nation Act, which was signed into law in 2014.
Northern Arizona University professor Sean Gregory's research found hormonal contraception use among young women is correlated with an increased risk of depression, which is correlated with adverse results in academic performance.
Northern Arizona University professor Kiisa Nishikawa and her team studied how titin, actin and calcium interact and how those interactions can affect the treatment of diseases like muscular dystrophy.
Northern Arizona University professor Joe Busch studies the ticks that carry cattle fever, where were largely eradicated in the United States but are crossing the southern border and infecting cattle.
Researchers from Arizona's three public universities, including Mikhail Chester from ASU and Ben Ruddell from NAU, received a $1.5 million grant from the NSF for this project.
Northern Arizona University professor Amirhossein Arzani authored a paper about which computational modeling of blood is more accurate when applied to monitoring the movement of blood through the human body, which affects how doctors treat patients with heart disease.
Informatics professor Ben Ruddell will leverage the datasets and methods they produced for FEWSION to map the water footprint of western agriculture and demonstrate the indirect effects caused by changes in snowmelt.
Northern Arizona University professor David Wagner, who has studied Francisella tularensis for more than a decade, said because countries have developed the bacteria as a weapon, the United States must develop the tools and knowledge to protect Americans from this potential threat.
The team, led by Northern Arizona University Kiona Ogle, will train graduate students in tackling big ecological questions through informatics, collaboration and better communication.
Geneticist Jason Ladner talks about the study, which underscores the need for focused prevention efforts among survivors and better capacity to detect new cases of the deadly virus.
Northern Arizona University ecologist Andrew Richardson used PhenoCam, a network of automated digital cameras, to track this unusual effect of climate change.
Proponents of “terraforming” Mars to make it habitable propose releasing greenhouse gases from the planet’s surface such as carbon dioxide (CO2) to trap heat, warm the climate and ultimately increase the atmospheric pressure. The plausibility of achieving this with current technology is the focus of a new study sponsored by NASA just published in Nature Astronomy.
Over the past 16 centuries, it’s been buried, soaked, lost, looted, sold across international borders, feared, destroyed by war, painted with shellac and set between sheets of glass.Its writers, followers of a visionary named Mani, wrote their religion’s oral traditions on papyrus.
Chad Trujillo is part of the team that is searching for Planet X, a large ice planet that orbits outside of Pluto. They also discovered a dwarf planet in 2014.
More than 16,000 ticks were sent in by people across the country and tested for various bacterial infections. Results show ticks capable of carrying Lyme disease are more widespread than originally thought.
A team of researchers at NAU was recently awarded $2.6 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a new program that will provide Native American students in STEM disciplines with unique opportunities to work with world-class researchers.
The scholars from Northern Arizona University found the significant and worrisome negative effects of climate change and wildfire could be mitigated with targeted forest restoration.
With $879,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation, Northern Arizona University entomologist Aaron Smith recently embarked on a major study that seeks to advance scientific understanding of these remarkable insects, including their phylogeny, evolutionary history and global biodiversity patterns.
Led by the Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research, the project will create a new version of the Symbiota software which will increase the platform’s digital specimen records, expand its use by researchers, improve sustainability and enrich education and outreach activities.
Northern Arizona University assistant professor Christopher Edwards was recently awarded a $1.2 million grant from NASA to understand the habitability of Mars by studying extreme, Mars-like environments on Earth.
Christopher Edwards received a $1.2 million grant from the PSTAR program to explore extreme environments on Earth for habitability and biosignatures, which can allow scientists to predict what to look for in space missions.
By Julie Hammonds Office of the Vice President for ResearchA Northern Arizona University physicist who studies complex, hybrid nanomaterials has been recognized for his academic leadership and the quality and innovation of his research. The Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) recently named assistant professor John Gibbs a 2018 Cottrell Scholar.
Mark Salvatore, who studied the surface of the Red Planet, also is part of a team that collaborates with scientists, engineers and NASA's rover operations to guide the Curiosity around Mars.
By Julie Hammonds Office of the Vice President for ResearchNorthern Arizona University assistant professor Ryan Behunin collaborated with a team of physicists from Yale and the University of Texas at Austin in discovering an innovative way to manipulate light in silicon. By demonstrating a new type of laser that amplifies light with sound waves in a silicon chip, the team’s research represents a significant advance in the field of silicon photonics.
As climate change brings more severe, more frequent wildfires and droughts throughout the western United States, land managers are increasingly challenged to find the best restoration approaches—and the right kinds of seeds to plant for successful outcomes. At the same time, pollinators such as bees, birds and butterflies are in decline, which poses a major threat to both conservation and agriculture. A cross-disciplinary team of NAU ecologists recently received a five-year, $935,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study which plants are most fit for restoring damaged lands and capable of supporting diverse pollinator communities.
As “mega-fires” in the boreal forest become more frequent and more intense, scientists believe the burning of these carbon-rich areas will drastically increase the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. But because these mega-fire areas are so large—more than 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres)—and are home to a complex diversity of vegetation types, accurately predicting these emissions has been challenging. A study recently completed by a team of NAU scientists was designed to help solve this problem.
Planetary geologist Mark Salvatore said this mission will provide the clearest look into Mars' interior structure, which will help scientists understand planetary formation and ways Earth and Mars differentiated over time.
Nathan Nieto's overall focus is the evolution of infectious diseases in wild animals and how that translates into transmitting diseases to humans. His current research looks at ticks that submit Lyme disease and relapsing fever.
Michael Erb looked at how the changing axial tint of the Earth affects climate and how measuring Antarctic ice cores in different time spans can yield different results.
Findings of a new study organized by the Permafrost Carbon Network (PCN) suggest that putting more effective greenhouse gas controls in place for the rest of this century could help mitigate the effects of climate change on the release of carbon from thawing soils of the northern permafrost region.
In a new study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers analyzed remote-sensing data from two lunar missions and concluded that water appears to be evenly spread across the surface of the moon, not confined to a particular region or type of terrain as previously thought. The study was led by Northern Arizona University planetary scientist Christopher Edwards.
By Kerry Bennett Office of the Vice President for ResearchA new study published in Nature Physics describes how a team of scientists used a laser beam to gain access to long-lived sound waves in crystalline solids as the basis for a potentially new approach to information processing and storage. One of Northern Arizona University’s newest physicists, assistant professor Ryan Behunin, is a co-author of the study.
The NSF-funded FEWSION Project maps the U.S. economy's food, energy and water systems. In light of the proposed tariffs, the researchers looked at how Americans could be affected differently.
Microbiologist Emily Cope talks about her research on how altered microbiota composition or function influences airway inflammatory diseases, chiefly CRS as well as asthma and cystic fibrosis.
A new paper by Northern Arizona University professor Andrew Richardson published in the journal Scientific Data describes a vast network of digital cameras designed to capture millions of images documenting seasonal changes of vegetation across North America.
A new study by Northern Arizona University scientists shows how much arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi contribute to the complex ecosystem that makes up the Serengeti.
A team of scientists from Northern Arizona University’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently announced a major achievement in ecosystem science. Their research, published as “Estimating taxon-specific population dynamics in diverse microbial communities” in the journal Ecosphere, illustrates a powerful new technique to simultaneously measure the growth rates of hundreds of individual bacterial taxa in any given soil sample.
Astronomy professor Mark Salvatore, who studies Mars via Antarctica, talks about how those winters compare to the winter storm that shut down the East Coast.
NAU Regents’ Professor Bruce Hungate, director of the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), recently joined a new initiative lead by LLNL to study how the soil microbiome controls the mechanisms that regulate the stabilization of the organic matter in soil.
NAU researcher Jeff Foster led the team of international scientists who tried to definitively answer several questions—where did this fungus come from? And more importantly, can a resistance be evolved?
The anatomy and mechanisms underlying vocal production are often poorly described, especially in small animals, but thanks to new imaging technology, NAU researchers were able to examine the laryngeal structures of small rodents for the first time.
Two professors with Northern Arizona University’s Center for Bioengineering Innovation (CBI) and Department of Biological Sciences—environmental physiologist Loren Buck and ecotoxicologist Frank von Hippel—are working on a long-term research project studying the link between the toxic chemicals polluting St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, and the health of the island’s population.