UnDisciplined

When we think of research universities, we imagine lab scientists hunkered in their labs, or marine biologists in their research ships, pursuing ever-narrower questions about their specialized study topics. But the complex questions and problems that concern society today must almost always draw upon the knowledge of more than a single discipline – yet scientists receive little or no training to cross intellectual and disciplinary borders. So they need help – and a new Center at the University of Utah is providing just that.

Autism is a word that many people fear, but much of that fear is driven by the fact that the United States has classified autism as a disorder. What if we started to think of the autistic brain as just different, not disordered? What if we thought of the autistic brain as an asset, not a liability? We want to try and change the way you think about autism.

The life process that is most fundamental to our well-being is the simple act of breathing. But it’s not so simple! Our lungs are one of the most complex and mysterious of our body organs. New research is shedding light on how our lungs develop, by creating gigantic datasets on the proteins that govern the development of our respiratory systems.

Some tidal species just don't do very well in the heat — and these organisms are at obvious risk as our planet warms up. But new research is pointing to a surprising survival strategy for some animals on the rugged Pacific coast: they're sticking together. Literally.

About 3.2 million people watch Tucker Carlson each night on Fox News. Think about that number this way: it's the equivalent of every person in the state of Utah, all watching the same show. Every night. And when Carlson gets them riled up–some of them get really really mean.

Most of us don’t think about evolution often, if at all, and when we do we often conjure up images of Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands. Today, the study of evolution is largely driven by mathematics, complexity theory, and machine learning, but a more complete understanding of evolution can also provide us with an important perspective on our place as a little leaf on the giant tree of life. This week we’re talking about why you oughta care about evolution.

This week we take a deep dive into the ancient, exploring the world as it existed over 66 million years ago, in an attempt to understand our present and our future. Creatures called Mosasaurs once inhabited our seas. They’re long extinct now, victims of the fifth great extinction event, along with 80 percent of the species alive at that time. But their lives and their world may give us insight into our own.

We have a complicated relationship with bears. Ask any hiker what their greatest fear is, and running into a bear will be at the top of that list. But we want to see them too! People travel from all over the world to our national parks with the hope of sighting a bear. Bears play an important role in our history, culture, environment, and economy. This week we’re talking about why you should care about bears.

Methane. It's more than just the gas released when cows... release gas. It has a warming potential 25x higher than carbon dioxide. Researchers in Utah's Uinta Basin have been studying emissions of methane and other chemicals from natural gas drilling sites since 2015. They recently found that, despite gas production decreasing, methane leaks at these sites have remained the same. As the world works to reduce greenhouse gases, these research provides valuable insights into sources of these emissions.

They've got warts, they sometimes smell like roasted peanuts, and in Wyoming, they're changing how they move because of a fungus. This week, we'll be discussing a concept known as behavioral fever in boreal toads, and how this fever is helping toads fight chytrid fungus.Dr. Barrile studies how individual toads’ movement and habitat choices scale up to influence population growth and demographic rates. His research uniquely documents toads altering their behavior to cope with chytrid fungus, a concept referred to as “behavioral fever”.