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Plant diseases attack trees and crops and can hurt lumber and food production, but University of Utah biologists found that pathogens that kill tree seedlings actually can make forests more diverse.

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University of Utah engineers developed the first room-temperature fuel cell that uses enzymes to help jet fuel produce electricity without needing to ignite the fuel. These new fuel cells can be used to power portable electronics, off-grid power and sensors.

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University of Utah engineers have developed a new type of carbon nanotube material for handheld sensors that will be quicker and better at sniffing out explosives, deadly gases and illegal drugs.

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When Yanomamö men in the Amazon raided villages and killed decades ago, they formed alliances with men in other villages rather than just with close kin like chimpanzees do. And the spoils of war came from marrying their allies’ sisters and daughters, rather than taking their victims’ land and women.

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A new study from the University of Utah confirms that substantial numbers of teens are sexting – sending and receiving explicit sexual images via cellphone. Though the behavior is widely studied, the potentially serious consequences of the practice led the researchers to more accurately measure how frequently teens are choosing to put themselves at risk in this fashion.

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Two new AAA-University of Utah studies show that despite public belief to the contrary, hands-free, voice-controlled automobile infotainment systems can distract drivers, although it is possible to design them to be safer. Apple's Siri and Chevrolet's MyLink were most distracting, while Toyota's Entune was least distracting.

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What’s rocky, about a mile wide, orbits between Mars and Jupiter and poses no threat to Earth? An asteroid named “Univofutah” after the University of Utah.

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A University of Utah study of Africa’s Kalahari Bushmen suggests that stories told over firelight helped human culture and thought evolve by reinforcing social traditions, promoting harmony and equality, and sparking the imagination to envision a broad sense of community, both with distant people and the spirit world.

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University of Utah engineers discovered a way to create a special material – a metal layer on top of a silicon semiconductor – that could lead to cost-effective, superfast computers that perform lightning-fast calculations but don’t overheat. This new “topological insulator” behaves like an insulator on the inside but conducts electricity on the outside.

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University of Utah physicists read “spins” in hydrogen nuclei and used the data to control current in a cheap, plastic LED – at room temperature and without strong magnetic fields. The study in Friday’s issue of Science brings physics a step closer to practical "spintronic" devices: superfast computers, more compact data storage and plastic or organic LEDs, more efficient than those used today in display screens for cell phones, computers and televisions.

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A University of Utah astronomer and his colleagues discovered that an ultracompact dwarf galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object. The finding suggests huge black holes may be more common than previously believed.

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Researchers at the University of Utah examined whether 3-D film is more effective than 2-D when used as a research method for evoking emotion. Both were effective, and 3-D did not add incremental benefit over 2-D, with implications for emotional research as well as entertainment.

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University of Utah biologist Çağan Şekercioğlu, who campaigns to save wetlands in his native Turkey, has won that nation’s highest science prize, which is similar to the U.S. National Medal of Science.

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A University of Utah team discovered a method for turning a small, $40 needle into a 3-D microscope capable of taking images up to 70 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

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Australia’s Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small fires to catch lizards, as they have for at least 2,000 years. A University of Utah researcher found such man-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations – showing how co-evolution helped marsupials and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists.

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A study of 1,400 ancient and modern human skulls suggests that a reduction in testosterone hormone levels accompanied the development of cooperation, complex communication and modern culture some 50,000 years ago.

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Woodrats lost their ability to eat toxic creosote bushes after antibiotics killed their gut microbes. Woodrats that never ate the plants were able to do so after receiving fecal transplants with microbes from creosote-eaters, University of Utah biologists found.

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By measuring how fast Earth conducts electricity and seismic waves, a University of Utah researcher and colleagues made a detailed picture of Mount Rainier’s deep volcanic plumbing and partly molten rock that will erupt again someday.

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After collectors found specimens of the prickly plant in 1974 and 1990, it was wrongly identified as three different species. Now a University of Utah botanist and colleagues identified the plant as a new, possibly endangered species named “from the heart” in Latin because it was found in Valentine, Texas.

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An observatory run by the University of Utah found a “hotspot” beneath the Big Dipper emitting a disproportionate number of the highest-energy cosmic rays. The discovery moves physics another step toward identifying the mysterious sources of the most energetic particles in the universe.

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Anyone who’s ever ventured into the comments section of a news website has likely observed some unfriendly exchanges. Now research from the University of Utah and the University of Arizona has confirmed just how common such behavior is.

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Returning to research of years ago, U biologists developed an assay to test effects of all possible silent mutations on protein translation. One-third of silent mutations caused a slow down--in some cases decreasing the speed of translation five-fold.

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University of Utah researchers devised a way to watch newly forming AIDS virus particles “budding” from human cells without interfering with the process. The method shows a protein named ALIX gets involved during the final stages of virus replication, not earlier, as was believed previously.

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A University of Utah-led team discovered a “hypervelocity star” that is the closest, second-brightest and among the largest of 20 found so far. Speeding at more than 1 million mph, the star may provide clues about the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way and the halo of mysterious “dark matter” surrounding the galaxy, astronomers say.

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When University of Utah biologists set out cotton balls treated with a mild pesticide, wild finches in the Galapagos used the cotton to help build their nests, killing parasitic fly maggots to protect baby birds. The self-fumigation method may help endangered birds and even some mammals.

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The University of Utah is the first university in the country to sponsor a community solar program. The program offers U community members the opportunity to purchase discounted rooftop solar panels and installation for their homes.

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Wildfires across the western United States have been getting bigger and more frequent over the last 30 years – a trend that could continue as climate change causes temperatures to rise and drought to become more severe in the coming decades, according to new research.

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Last winter’s curvy jet stream pattern brought mild temperatures to western North America and harsh cold to the East. A University of Utah-led study shows that pattern became more pronounced 4,000 years ago, and suggests it may worsen as Earth’s climate warms.

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Fossil dinosaurs, animals and plants being found in southern Utah that are distinct from those found farther north in rocks of the same age are telling a new story about the end of the age of dinosaurs in Utah. That is the topic for “Dino Hunters” – a feature article in the current issue of National Geographic Magazine.

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Alex Smith, quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, U graduate and generous philanthropist is the U's 2014 commencement speaker. He will receive an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for his dedication and inspiration – on and off the field of play.

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University of Utah electrical engineers fabricated the smallest plasma transistors that can withstand high temperatures and ionizing radiation found in a nuclear reactor. Such transistors someday might enable smartphones that take and collect medical X-rays on a battlefield, and devices to measure air quality in real time.

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Scientists from Carnegie and Smithsonian museums and the University of Utah today unveiled the discovery, naming and description of a sharp-clawed, 500-pound, bird-like dinosaur that roamed the Dakotas with T. rex 66 million years ago and looked like an 11 ½-foot-long “chicken from hell.”

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With many law schools facing criticism for failing to train students to practice law, a long series of recent national awards shows that the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law achieves the opposite result.

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University of Utah chemists discovered how vibrations in chemical bonds can be used to predict chemical reactions and thus design better catalysts to speed reactions that make medicines, industrial products and new materials.

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As the climate changes in the 21st century, more hurricanes may stray farther north along the eastern seaboard, like Superstorm Sandy did. During Sandy, researchers used crowdsourcing to collect the largest ever dataset of hurricane rain waters and analyze the storm's isotopic fingerprint.

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Using an inexpensive inkjet printer, University of Utah electrical engineers produced microscopic structures that use light in metals to carry information. This new technique, which controls electrical conductivity within such microstructures, could be used to rapidly fabricate superfast components in electronic devices, make wireless technology faster or print magnetic materials.

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Genetic and environmental evidence indicates that after the ancestors of Native Americans left Asia, they spent 10,000 years on a land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska. Archaeological evidence is lacking because it drowned when sea levels rose. University of Utah anthropologist Dennis O’Rourke and colleagues make that argument in the Friday, Feb. 28, issue of the journal Science.

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Scientists at the University of Utah identified mutations in three key genes that determine feather color in domestic rock pigeons. The same genes control pigmentation of human skin and can be responsible for melanoma and albinism.

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With nearly one-third of Americans suffering from chronic pain, prescription opioid painkillers have become the leading form of treatment for this debilitating condition. Unfortunately, misuse of prescription opioids can lead to serious side effects—including death by overdose. A new treatment developed by University of Utah researcher Eric Garland has shown to not only lower pain but also decrease prescription opioid misuse among chronic pain patients.

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University of Utah bioengineers showed that tiny blood vessels grow better in the laboratory if the tissue surrounding them is less dense. Then the researchers created a computer simulation to predict such growth accurately – an early step toward treatments to provide blood supply to tissues damaged by diabetes and heart attacks and to skin grafts and implanted ligaments and tendons.

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Last year’s gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America’s modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, University of Utah scientists discovered.

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Researchers have found an extensive reservoir in the Greenland Ice Sheet that holds water year round. A surprising discovery, the existence of the 27,000 square mile aquifer adds important information to sea level rise calculations.

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In some mountain ranges, Earth’s warming climate is driving rabbit relatives known as pikas to higher elevations or wiping them out. But University of Utah biologists discovered that roly-poly pikas living in rockslides near sea level in Oregon can survive hot weather by eating more moss than any other mammal.

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A study led by the University of Utah and Texas Tech University, shows that although the average individual may not be able to identify melanomas, groups of people can through a process known as collective effort.

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Air flows mostly in a one-way loop through the lungs of monitor lizards – a breathing method shared by birds, alligators and presumably dinosaurs, according to a new University of Utah study that may push the evolution of this trait back to 270 million years ago.

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University of Utah and German biologists discovered how nerve cells recycle tiny bubbles or “vesicles” that send chemical nerve signals from one cell to the next. The process is much faster and different than two previously proposed mechanisms for recycling the bubbles.

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University of Utah biologists found that when mother mice compete socially for mates in a promiscuous environment, their sons play hard and die young: They attract more females by making more urinary pheromones, but smelling sexier shortens their lives.