University of Utah

Hydrogen sulfide is not a gas that is usually described as life sustaining. However while its toxic fumes might knock most of us out, there is a creature that thrives on this toxic gas – the giant shipworm, a mysterious mud-dwelling creature that has eluded scientists till now.

​​Badgers are known to bury food items underground, but new research has revealed just how deep they are willing to dig. Camera traps have caught a single badger burying an entire cow carcass, the first evidence of the scavenger stowing away an animal carcass larger than itself. ​

Researchers at the University of Utah have developed a new thermoelectric material that doesn’t use the toxic chemicals common in others, but is still efficient and affordable enough for use in everyday products, meaning the day a phone can be charged by a cooking pot may not be far away.

​With an epidemic of addiction to opioid painkillers on the rise, researchers say they've found an alternative for pain relief from an unlikely source – a small snail found in the Caribbean Sea. The little cone snail Conus regius​ produces a venom that blocks a different pain pathway.

It can be a hassle, taking your glasses on and off to switch between near and distant vision. That's why scientists from the University of Utah have developed glasses that change focus automatically, depending on what you're looking at.​

Researchers at the University of Utah have devised a method to create invisible images embedded within normal-looking images using cheap inkjet printers. The data hidden in these images can then only be revealed using sub-millimeter electromagnetic radiation

Scientists have observed the brain's reward circuits in Mormons as they engaged in spiritual activities, finding that they activated regions in a very similar fashion to other stimuli like gambling, drugs, sex and love.

Most bans on ivory trading outlaw the sale of pieces acquired after 1976. Scientists have now used a form of carbon dating to determine the real age of ivory samples, with an early study revealing more than 90 percent of seized shipments came from animals that died within three years previous.​​

Scientists have discovered a fast-acting insulin from a notoriously slow-moving source, finding the insulin in a certain type of snail venom can begin working in a third of the time of the fastest insulins currently on the market. ​

Some dinosaurs may not have roared as they do in the movies, according to a new study. Instead, they may have even cooed like birds.

Engineers have developed a new type of thin, flat, and ultralight lens which can still bend light to a single point like traditional lenses. The development could see future cameras use paper-thin lenses rather than bulky protruding optics.

Researchers could be fending off the demise of Moore's Law with the help of a new kind of flat semiconducting material made of tin monoxide that is only one-atom thick, allowing electrical charges to pass through it faster than silicon or other 3D materials.