Utah
Astrophysicists suggest a "highway" of dark matter from another galaxy may be showering down on Earth. The findings may change the way astronomers look for mysterious cosmic particles, long suspected to outweigh known atomic matter. Scientists believe that about 90 percent of the mass in the universe is made up of particles called "dark matter." This belief is based on an unseen gravitational pull on the stars, but observations to directly detect dark matter have been sketchy. One Italy-based research group, called DAMA (for DArk MAtter), has made steady claims to have detected particles of dark matter, but so far the results have not been confirmed.
WIMPs speeding at 670,000 mph on a "highway" in space may be raining onto Earth ? a phenomenon that might prove the existence of "dark matter" that makes up most our galaxy and one-fourth of the universe, says a study co-authored by a University of Utah physicist. Many researchers have long suspected that dark matter may be made of WIMPS or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, which are theorized subatomic particles. More than 20 groups of physicists worldwide are building or have built devices to detect them.
It's looking and feeling a lot less like Christmas in many parts of the country as higher temperatures and fewer snowfalls are becoming the norm from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve.
Looking at states that typically get snow, 197 of 260 weather stations have reported fewer days with snowfall since 1948, according to statistics provided by Dale Kaiser, a meteorologist in the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The survey looked at the 30-day period from Nov. 25 to Dec. 24 from 1948 to 2001.
A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material ? that's 196,000 pounds ? is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles, according to a study conducted at the University of Utah.
"Can you imagine loading 40 acres worth of wheat ? stalks, roots and all ? into the tank of your car or SUV every 20 miles?" asks ecologist Jeff Dukes, whose study will be published in the November issue of the journal Climatic Change.
Imagine if people kept hiking through your baby's room. That's essentially what happens in some of the canyons where Mexican spotted owls breed, and a new study shows that hikers can disrupt the owls' behavior in ways that might harm their young. "We suggest that restrictions on hiking intensity should be considered for canyons with high levels of human activity," say Elliott Swarthout, who did this work while at the University of Arizona in Tucson and is now at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, and Robert Steidl of the University of Arizona in Tucson in the February issue of Conservation Biology.
Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy often endure painful side effects caused by the powerful drugs as they course through their entire bodies, damaging healthy tissue and tumors alike. Utah researchers are reporting in the December issue "Cancer Research" that they have successfully tested a new method in laboratory animals that would concentrate the impact of cancer drugs on specific cancerous tissues, thus sparing the rest of the body from harm.
An international team of scientists has discovered a novel genetic trait that protects its carriers against the deadliest forms of malaria, while people without the trait are more likely to succumb to its fatal consequences. This trait -- a mutation or "polymorphism" in the NOS2 gene -- controls the production of nitric oxide, a small chemical that can kill parasites and prevent malaria disease.
A major, magnitude-7.9 earthquake that rocked Alaska on Sunday apparently triggered scores of earthquakes some 2,000 miles away at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. By 8:30 a.m. MST Monday Nov. 4 - about 17 hours after the Alaskan quake - more than 200 small earthquakes had been detected occurring in clusters throughout the Yellowstone area. The quakes were recorded by the Yellowstone seismic network operated by the University of Utah Seismograph Stations.
An amino acid supplement called L-tyrosine, recommended by fitness trainers and sold by supplement outlets as an endurance booster, has no effect on endurance, according to a new Brigham Young University study. "There wasn't any indication from our tests that tyrosine had an effect in the blood or in the brain," said Allen Parcell, assistant professor in the Human Performance Research Center at BYU. "Tyrosine didn't improve endurance performance in our subjects."
Contrary to an opinion held by some researchers, a new analysis of more than 20 years of historical data has found no evidence that the increasing number of large icebergs off Antarctica's coasts is a result of global warming trends. "The dramatic increase in the number of large icebergs as recorded by the National Ice Center database does not represent a climatic change," said Brigham Young University's David Long. "Our reanalysis suggests that the number of icebergs remained roughly constant from 1978 to the late 1990s." Using BYU's supercomputers, Long enhanced images of the waters around Antarctica transmitted by satellite. Comparing this data to records from the federal government's National Ice Center, which tracks icebergs larger than ten miles on one side, he determined that previous tracking measures were inadequate, resulting in a gross undercounting.
