It’s a lesson in scholastic humility: You waltz into an exam, confident that you’ve got a good enough grip on the class material to swing an 80 percent or so, maybe a 90 if some of the questions go your way. Then you get your results: 60 percent. Your grade and your stomach both sink. […]

It’s estimated that about 788,000 people worldwide died of liver cancer in 2015, the second-leading cause of cancer deaths, according to the latest statistics from the World Health Organization. One of the major challenges in combatting this disease is detecting it early because symptoms often don’t appear until later stages. But a team of researchers […]

Around 2010, the deep waters of Utah’s Great Salt Lake contained high levels of toxic methylmercury. Mercury measurements in waterfowl surrounding the lake led to a rare human consumption advisory for ducks. But by 2015, 90 percent of the deep mercury was gone. The disappearance of the mercury was not due to aggressive environmental policies […]

Because the sun doesn’t always shine, solar utilities need a way to store extra charge for a rainy day. The same goes for wind power facilities, since the wind doesn’t always blow. To take full advantage of renewable energy, electrical grids need large batteries that can store the power coming from wind and solar installations […]

Nearly a century ago, German chemist Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a process to generate ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen gases. The process, still in use today, ushered in a revolution in agriculture, but now consumes around one percent of the world’s energy to achieve the high pressures and temperatures that […]

University of Utah faculty and alumni won six out of 12 of the 2016 Governor’s Medals for Science and Technology. The U’s winners are Cynthia Burrows of the Department of Chemistry, Cynthia Furse of the Department of Electrical and Chemical Engineering, Adam Beehler of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Vivian S. Lee of […]

University of Utah chemists devised a new way to detect chemical damage to DNA that sometimes leads to genetic mutations responsible for many diseases, including various cancers and neurological disorders. “We are one step closer to understanding the underlying chemistry that leads to genetic diseases,” says Cynthia Burrows, distinguished professor and chair of chemistry at […]