The internet footprint left behind by an institution of higher education can show its contribution to scientific research and other scholarship, and that can be compared to the internet impact of other schools to develop an overall ranking. That’s the method by which the Webometric Ranking of World Universities selected institutions of higher education to be on its list.
University of Utah scientists developed a new crime-fighting tool by showing that human hair reveals the general location where a person drank water, helping police track past movements of criminal suspects or unidentified murder victims.
Read MoreThe following letter was sent to President John Peters, Northern Illinois University, February 14, 2008.
Read MoreWhat was America like, before Columbus?
Scattered across the landscape below were countless islands of forest, many of them almost-perfect circles-heaps of green in a sea of yellow grass. Each island rose as much as sixty feet above the floodplain, allowing trees to grow that otherwise could not endure the water. The forests were bridged by raised beams, as straight as a rifle shot and up to three miles long.
Award-winning author Charles C. Mann describes a landscape contrary to the traditionally held image of the Americas as sparsely populated virgin forest. New evidence, he claims, indicates the Amazon rain forest is largely a human artifact and that the Western Hemisphere pre-Columbus was vastly more sophisticated than has been thought, “an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe.”
Read MorePayday lenders, creditors that charge interest rates averaging about 450 percent, are more prevalent in Conservative Christian states, according to a new study coauthored by University of Utah law professor Christopher Peterson. The study, which is based on the most comprehensive database of payday lender locations yet compiled, maps a surprising relationship between populations of Christian conservatives and the proliferation of payday lenders.
Read MoreWhen an alligator eats, the amount it consumes is like a 130-pound woman eating a 30-pound hamburger. University of Utah biologist C. G. Farmer and colleagues have figured out how alligators digest such big–and often bony–meals: They divert blood away from the lungs and toward their stomach, which sharply increases the production of gastric acid needed for digestion.
Renowned social justice and diversity scholars, Peggy McIntosh and the University of Utah’s own Dolores Delgado Bernal, will present the keynote address at the Associated Students of the University of Utah’s (ASUU) 4th Annual Conference on Social Awareness on January 26th in the A. Ray Olpin Union.
Read MoreU.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice recently appointed University of Utah President Michael K. Young to the East-West Center’s (EWC) Board of Governors. One of four new members on the board, Young joins Lori Forman, Microsoft director of community affairs for Asia; Theodore B. Lee, president of the Urban Land Company in San Francisco and Las Vegas, and S. Linn Williams, executive vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer of the Mirant Corporation in a three-year term on the board.
Read MoreMuscles usually contract when a neurotransmitter molecule is released from nerve cells onto muscle cells. But University of Utah scientists discovered that bare subatomic protons can act like larger, more complex neurotransmitters, making gut muscles contract in tiny round worms so the worms can poop.
Read MoreThe University of Utah Chicano Scholarship Fund (CSF) is now accepting applications for the 2008 Chicano Scholarship Awards. CSF works to support the success of outstanding Chicano/Latino students with financial awards while attending the University of Utah. The goal of CSF is to recognize students who promote the cultural pride and traditions of the Chicano/Latino community while overcoming their own life challenges. Scholarship recipients are selected on the basis of family background, involvement in community activities which strengthen the Chicano/Latino community, and life challenges which exemplify the Chicano struggle for opportunity. Last year CSF, with a generous donation from the Ibarra Foundation, awarded ten $1,000 scholarships and renewed two, full ride Ibarra Foundation scholarships for the 2007 – 2008 year.
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