Technologically valuable ultrastable glasses can be produced in days or hours with properties corresponding to those that have been aged for thousands of years, computational and laboratory studies have confirmed. Aging makes for higher quality [...]
Author Archive | The University of Chicago
Life and death through the eyes of elk bones
Josh Miller likes to call himself a conservation paleobiologist. The label makes sense when he explains how he uses bones as up-to-last-season information on contemporary animal populations. Bones, he says, provide baseline ecological data on [...]
Ethiopians, Tibetans thrive in thin air using different genes
Scientists say they have pinpointed genetic changes that allow some Ethiopians to live and work more than a mile and a half above sea level without getting altitude sickness. The specific genes differ from those [...]
Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows
People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows. The study is the [...]
When people worry about math, the brain feels the pain
Mathematics anxiety can prompt a response in the brain similar to when a person experiences physical pain, according to new research at the University of Chicago. Using brain scans, scholars determined that the brain areas [...]
Animals learn to fine-tune their sniffs
Animals use their noses to focus their sense of smell, much the same way that humans focus their eyes, new research at the University of Chicago shows. A research team studying rats found that animals [...]
Novel crystal ‘heals’ defects in materials
In a paper just published in Nature Materials, a team of researchers that includes William T.M. Irvine, assistant professor in physics at the University of Chicago, has succeeded in creating a defect in the structure [...]
Cute little vampire dinosaur ID’d in S. Africa
A new species of plant-eating dinosaur with tiny, 1-inch-long jaws has come to light in South African rocks dating to the early dinosaur era, some 200 million years ago. This “punk-sized” herbivore is one of [...]
Scholars finish dictionary of ancient Egyptian language
A dictionary of thousands of words chronicling the everyday lives of people in ancient Egypt — including what taxes they paid, what they expected in a marriage and how much work they had to do [...]
Poorest of the poor worse since 1996 welfare reform
Although the federal government’s 1996 reform of welfare brought some improvements for the nation’s poor, it also may have made extremely poor Americans worse off, new research shows. The reforms radically changed cash assistance—what most [...]
More grandparents fill caregiver role
Grandparents, an increasingly important source of child care in the United States, vary greatly in the kind of care they provide, depending on their age, resources, and the needs of their children, research at the [...]
March Madness brings students in September
Whether you call it the Flutie Effect or the Jimmer Bump, a banner year in NCAA men’s basketball or football is followed by a flood of prospective students. Economists at Brigham Young University and the [...]
Antisense approach promising for treatment of parasitic infections
A targeted approach to treating toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease, shows early promise in test-tube and animal studies, where it prevented the parasites from making selected proteins. When tested in newly infected mice, it reduced the [...]
Grapefruit juice lets patients take lower dose of cancer drug
A glass a day of grapefruit juice lets patients derive the same benefits from an anti-cancer drug as they would get from more than three times as much of the drug by itself, according to [...]
MRSA cases in academic hospitals double in 5 years
Infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) doubled at academic medical centers in the U.S. between 2003 and 2008, according to a report published in the August issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the [...]
Investing in Karma by Doing Good Deeds
For so many important outcomes in life – applying for jobs, waiting for medical test results – there comes a point when you just have to sit back and hope for the best. But that [...]
Immediate rewards for good scores can boost student performance
Test performance can improve dramatically if students are offered rewards just before they are given standardized tests and if they receive the incentive immediately afterward, new research at the University of Chicago shows. Educators have [...]
Learning about spatial relationships boosts understanding of numbers
Children who are skilled in understanding how shapes fit together to make recognizable objects also have an advantage when it comes to learning the number line and solving math problems, research at the University of [...]
H1N1 Vaccine Produces Antibodies Against Multiple Flu Strains
The pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccine can generate antibodies in vaccinated individuals not only against the H1N1 virus, but also against other influenza virus strains including H5N1 and H3N2. This discovery adds an important new dimension [...]
Undocumented Latino youth turn to activism to combat obstacles
Undocumented Latino youth in the U.S. face futures clouded by fewer rights than their documented peers and the constant fear of deportation. Such status constraints usually aren’t fully understood until young adulthood, said UC Irvine [...]