The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, wages war in our bodies using a strategy evolved over millions of years that turns our own cellular machines against themselves. Despite massive strides in understanding the disease, there are still important gaps. For years, scientists at the University of Utah wished there was a way to visualize how […]

Take a deep breath in. Slowly let it out. You have just participated in one of the most profound evolutionary revolutions on Earth—breathing air on land. It’s unclear how the first vertebrates thrived after crawling out of the sea nearly 400 million years ago, but the lungs hold an important clue. Birds, reptiles, mammals and […]

University of Utah professors John S. Parkinson of the School of Biological Sciences and Marc D. Porter of the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering are among the 443 newly elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as a fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their […]

Fifteen years ago, University of Utah forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni wanted girls to have a Barbie doll that represented a career like hers, or at least one that wore rubber boots and carried a climbing rope and helmet. But with a lack of tree canopy field gear among the existing accoutrements for the doll, Nadkarni […]

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 3 people experience debilitating anxiety—the kind that prevents someone from going about their normal life. Women are also more at risk to suffer from anxiety. Yet the roots of anxiety and other anxiety-related diseases, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), are still unclear. In a […]

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 […]

This release is adapted from material prepared by University College London Whether ‘alien’ bird species thrive in a new habitat depends more on the environmental conditions than the population size or characteristics of the invading bird species, say researchers, including University of Utah ornithologist Çağan Şekercioğlu. A new study published today in Nature shows that […]

Winters in the northern hemisphere are brutal. The harsh conditions drive some species to hibernate; bears reduce their metabolic state to conserve energy until spring. Forests also endure winter by conserving energy; they shut down photosynthesis, the process by which a green pigment called chlorophyll captures sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce the chemical […]

Researchers have been baffled by tropical rainforest diversity for over a century; 650 different tree species can exist in an area covering two football fields, yet similar species never grow next to each other. It seems like it’s good to be different than your neighbors, but why? To grow in a tropical rainforest is to […]

When naturalist Charles Darwin stepped onto the Galapagos Islands in 1835, he encountered a bird that sparked a revolutionary theory on how new species originate. From island to island, finches had wildly varied beak designs that reflected their varied diets. The so-called Darwin’s finches are an emblem of adaptive radiation, which describes when organisms from […]