Student-Built Satellite Scheduled for Launch
University of MichiganA 6.5-pound satellite is scheduled to become the first stand-alone spacecraft built by Michigan students to go into orbit and perform a science mission.
A 6.5-pound satellite is scheduled to become the first stand-alone spacecraft built by Michigan students to go into orbit and perform a science mission.
Protecting helicopters in combat from heat-seeking missiles is the goal of new laser technology created at the University of Michigan and Omni Sciences, Inc., which is a U-M spin-off company.
Improving the image quality of lower-dose CT scans for diagnosing and monitoring lung disease is the main goal of a $1.9-million grant that the University of Michigan and GE Global Research have received from the National Institutes of Health.
To watch a magician transform a vase of flowers into a rabbit, it's best to have a front-row seat. Likewise, for chemical transformations in solution, the best view belongs to the molecular spectators closest to the action.
Vitamin A and beta-carotene supplements are unsafe for HIV-positive women who breastfeed because they may boost the excretion of HIV in breast milk---thereby increasing the chances of transmitting the infection to the child, a pair of new studies suggest.
Proponents of organic farming often speak of nature's balance in ways that sound almost spiritual, prompting criticism that their views are unscientific and naïve. At the other end of the spectrum are those who see farms as battlefields where insect pests and plant diseases must be vanquished with the magic bullets of modern agriculture: pesticides, fungicides and the like.
Halogen bonding, hyperconjugation, electroactive polymers---such subjects are typical fare in graduate-level chemistry courses. But how many classes challenge students to explain the concepts to the whole world?
In these lean times, smart consumers refuse to pay a lot for throwaway items, but will shell out a little more for products that can be used again and again. The same is true of bacteria and other microbes, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned.
In a step toward more efficient, smaller and higher-definition display screens, a University of Michigan professor has developed a new type of color filter made of nano-thin sheets of metal with precisely spaced gratings.
Children are more likely to do their homework if they see it as an investment, not a chore, according to new research at the University of Michigan.
Falsely advertising one's fighting ability might seem like a good strategy for a wimp who wants to come off as a toughie, but in paper wasp societies, such deception is discouraged through punishment, experiments at the University of Michigan suggest.
It takes a village to keep a pregnant woman at her healthiest, a new University of Michigan study shows.
Pilots and dentists have more in common than one might think: Both jobs are highly technical and require teamwork. Both are subject to human error where small, individual mistakes may lead to catastrophe if not addressed early.
Shade-grown coffee farms support native bees that help maintain the health of some of the world's most biodiverse tropical regions, according to a study by a University of Michigan biologist and a colleague at the University of California, Berkeley.
When paleontologist Iyad Zalmout went looking for fossil whales and dinosaurs in Saudi Arabia, he never expected to come face-to-face with a significant, early primate fossil.
In cells, as in cities, disposing of garbage and recycling anything that can be reused is an essential service. In both city and cell, health problems can arise when the process breaks down.
Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy portrayed Russians as a brooding, complicated people, and ethnographers have confirmed that Russians tend to focus on dark feelings and memories more than Westerners do. But a new University of Michigan study finds that even though Russians tend to brood, they are less likely than Americans to feel as depressed as a result.
An international team co-led by scientists from the University of Michigan have discovered 12 more regions on the genome with DNA variants that are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, bringing the number to 38.
University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year's Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" is expected to be larger than average, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a $659 million fishery.
California's San Andreas fault is notorious for repeatedly generating major earthquakes and for being on the brink of producing the next "big one" in a heavily populated area. But the famously violent fault also has quieter sections, where rocks easily slide against each other without giving rise to damaging quakes.
A new synthetic Petri dish coating could overcome a major challenge to the advancement of human embryonic stem cell research, say University of Michigan researchers.
Today's college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and '90s, a University of Michigan study shows.
Every autumn, as predictably as falling leaves, flu season descends upon us. Every spring, just as predictably, the season comes to a close. This cyclical pattern, common in temperate regions, is well known, but the driving forces behind it have been in question.
If you're among the parents-to-be who've used one of the increasingly popular online Chinese calendar charts to predict your baby's sex, a University of Michigan epidemiologist recommends that you hold off on painting the nursery pink or blue.
Despite the distraction potential of laptops in college classrooms, new research shows that they can actually increase students' engagement, attentiveness, participation and learning.
At the scale of the very small, physics can get peculiar. A University of Michigan biomedical engineering professor has discovered a new instance of such a nanoscale phenomenon---one that could lead to faster, less expensive portable diagnostic devices and push back frontiers in building micro-mechanical and "lab on a chip" devices.
When people are under chronic stress, they tend to smoke, drink, use drugs and overeat to help cope with stress. These behaviors trigger a biological cascade that helps prevent depression, but they also contribute to a host of physical problems that eventually contribute to early death.
Educating and developing the next generation of world-class naval systems engineers is the goal of a new Naval Engineering Education Center (NEEC) to be led by the University of Michigan.
The face looks familiar but… Just as humans don't always know their neighbors, new research at the University of Michigan shows even the most social of animals don't always recognize individuals they regularly encounter, the first known evidence of "missing social knowledge" in non-human primates.
A team of scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have programmed an autonomous molecular "robot" made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track.
Travel from the tropics to the poles, and you'll notice that the diversity of mammals declines with distance from the equator. Move from lowland to mountains, and you'll see diversity increase as the landscape becomes more varied. Ecologists have proposed various explanations for these well-known "biodiversity gradients," invoking ecological, evolutionary and historical processes.
Among the worrisome environmental effects of global warming is the thawing of Arctic permafrost---soil that normally remains at or below the freezing point for at least a two-year period and often much longer. Monitoring changes in permafrost is difficult with current methods, but a study by University of Michigan researchers offers a new approach to assessing the extent of the problem.
As a way to simplify lab-on-a-chip devices that could offer quicker, cheaper and more portable medical tests, University of Michigan researchers have created microfluidic integrated circuits.
Heating and squishing microalgae in a pressure-cooker can fast-forward the crude-oil-making process from millennia to minutes.
New findings about a temperature sensor in the skin could lead to novel approaches to controlling excess hair growth and treating skin cancers.
In a new Social Venture Creation course at the University of Michigan, students who want to make the world a better place are learning hands-on how to use market principles to solve society's challenges.
A cat can recognize a face faster and more efficiently than a supercomputer.
Two notorious Great Lakes invaders---the zebra mussel and the round goby---now play a central role in transferring toxic chemicals called PCBs up the food chain and into Saginaw Bay walleyes, one of that region's most popular sport fish.
For the first time, astronomers have directly observed the mysterious dark companion in a binary star system that has puzzled skywatchers since the 19th century.
The proportion of older middle-aged Americans who report disabilities related to mobility increased significantly from 1997 to 2007, in contrast to the disability decline that has been found among Americans ages 65 and over, according to a new study by the RAND Corporation and the University of Michigan.
Biologists long have known that both the appearance of organisms and their inner workings are shaped by evolution. But do the same genetic mechanisms underlie changes in form and function? A new study by scientists at the University of Michigan and Taiwan's National Health Research Institutes suggests not.
Trailing like a serpent's spine along the western coast of South America, the Andes are the world's longest continental mountain range and the highest range outside Asia, with an average elevation of 13,000 feet.
The skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, illustrates that some sauropod species went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth.
In the ruins of a city that was once Rome's neighbor, archaeologists last summer found a 1,000-pound lead coffin.
The University of Michigan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China today launched two programs to jointly fund renewable energy and biomedical research projects involving investigators from both universities.
Tiny generators developed at the University of Michigan could produce enough electricity from random, ambient vibrations to power a wristwatch, pacemaker or wireless sensor.
Like a film director cutting out extraneous footage to create a blockbuster, the cellular machine called the spliceosome snips out unwanted stretches of genetic material and joins the remaining pieces to fashion a template for protein production.
A new University of Michigan study supports what college football fans and rabid tailgaters already knew: Nothing can keep diehard fans away from tailgate parties on game day.
In findings that took the experimenters three years to believe, University of Michigan engineers and their collaborators have demonstrated that light itself can twist ribbons of nanoparticles.
Nature abounds with examples of evolutionary arms races. Certain marine snails, for example, evolved thick shells and spines to avoid be eaten, but crabs and fish foiled the snails by developing shell-crushing claws and jaws.