The Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah presents the 2019 Tanner Lecture on Human Values given by artist and designer, Maya Lin, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 7 p.m. at Kingsbury Hall. Lin interprets the natural world through history, politics and culture, creating a body of work that balances art […]

New research shows that a specific mind-body therapy, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), increases the brain’s response to natural, healthy rewards while also decreasing the brain’s response to opioid-related cues. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, examined data from four experiments involving 135 adults who took opioids daily for chronic pain. The study […]

Researchers at University of Utah Health and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have identified brain circuitry differences that might be associated with suicidal behavior in individuals with mood disorders. The study, published in Psychological Medicine, provides a promising lead toward tools that can predict which individuals are at the highest risk for suicide. […]

Language is a powerful tool that can be used to both isolate and unite. Even more impactful is the reclamation or creation of terminology to embody a notion or rallying cause. “The word ‘queero’ was a joking combination of ‘queer heroes,’” Pride Week co-chair Taylor Anderson (she/her) laughed. “But the name stuck.” This practice is […]

For more than 30 years, University of Utah entomologist Jack Longino has been watching the ground. Whether he’s deep in a tropical jungle or scanning the sidewalks of a Central American city, Longino is always looking for ants. “Ants rule!” he says. Recently, Longino compiled those decades of work into a monograph, detailing 234 species […]

Everyone is a mutant but some are prone to diverge more than others, report scientists at University of Utah Health. At birth, children typically have 70 new genetic mutations compared to their parents (out of the 6 billion letters that make both parental copies of DNA sequence). A new study published in eLife shows that […]

In a year that celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing and mankind’s first steps on the moon, U.S. explorers have once again brought home pieces of the moon for study- but this time from Antarctica, not Mare Tranquillitatis. Five meteorites, all pieces of a previously unknown lunar breccia (a sedimentary rock made of broken […]

Smoke from a summer wildfire is more than just an eye-stinging plume of nuisance. It’s a poison to the lungs and hearts of the people who breathe it in and a dense blanket that hampers firefighting operations. There’s an atmospheric feedback loop, says University of Utah atmospheric scientist Adam Kochanski, that can lock smoke in […]

In partnership with Mormons Building Bridges, the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah will host “A Spiritual Home: Building Bridges for Sexual and Gender Minorities in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Sept. 27-28 at the Salt Lake City Main Library. “In the established tradition of the Tanner Humanities Center and […]

Sept. 9, 2019 — As Rodolfo Martinez-Mota well knows, from the cactus spines in his clothes and skin, white-throated woodrats love to eat prickly pear cactus (from the Opuntia genus). They like the cactus so much that their gut microorganism community, or microbiome, is specially equipped to break down toxins in the cactus. But Martinez-Mota and […]