UnDisciplined

An interdisciplinary research team has woven evidence from the literature, their own experiments, and wind tunnels to understand how mosquitoes hunt and find their prey.

A new study documents that older adults have more space allocated to clutter, but that very clutter can also make older people more creative.

Skiing, biking, hiking, ATV riding. Whatever form recreation takes, it has an impact on the environment. So how can studying the spectrum of impacts that recreation can have on an ecosystem lead to better management decisions? A new framework developed by researchers from USC, US Institute of outdoor recreation and tourism is working to answer this question and more.

Utah's title of "greatest snow" is at risk due to climate change. We're focusing on impacts, perceptions and adaptation strategies ski resorts are taking as they cope with climate change.

We love to identify good guys and bad guys–in cartoons, movies, and nature. Nature’s good guys, for example, pollinate our crops. The bad guys are venomous animals that bite, sting, or even kill us with their poisons. But recent scientific discoveries by an Australian scientist revealed that the venom of a species of sea anemones contains 84 types of toxins, some of which might serve as the founda...

New scientific discoveries are the purview of researchers, but that vital information is important to everyone.

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 c...

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 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 int...

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...

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 work...

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 r...

Just about everyone has experienced a shift in their relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people we didn't get to see as much, some people we saw a lot more of--for better or worse. But researchers are discovering that it wasn't just our relationships with people we know that changed, it was our relationships with people in the media we consume. This week we're talking about how the pa...

If you started your day with a cup of coffee, kept it going with a cup of cola, or ended it with a glass of wine, you are part of a long human tradition of spicing up your life with intoxicating substances. As a species, we have been getting drunk and stoned for a very long time. But, like so many other things, it turns out we aren't all that unique in this way. Animals were getting blitzed long b...

There's a lot more going on beneath the forest floor than you might realize. A vast underground network of fungi help some 95% of plants survive, helping them absorb nutrients and commnicate with other plants. New research shows that this fungi network might also be protecting the forest's biggest trees against pests and pathogens. Sara Germain is a PhD candidate in ecology at Utah State Universit...

This week on UnDisciplined we're talking about teens and their smartphones. You've likely heard about how social media is making teens more depressed, anxious and lonely. However, there are some positives to teens staying connected virtually. Intriguing new research looks at how teens are using the internet to cope with stress.

This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about a breakthrough in our understanding of long COVID. Some 30% of COVID patients will have lingering symptoms for 3 to 6 months after contracting the virus. New research suggests that long COVID might be the result on an antibody attacking the immune system and we'll be talking about what we do and don't know about the causes of this phenomenon. John Ar...

Climate change is profoundly affecting animals, but not only in the ways you might be thinking of. Compelling new research suggests that animals are shape-shifting to adapt. Birds beaks are getting bigger, mouse tails longer, all in an effort to better regulate their body temperatures. Sara Ryding is the lead author of this study published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Sara is a Ph...

Covid-19 is not the first virus to travel around the globe. This week on UnDisciplined, we'll be talking about how the slave trade brought new viruses to the Americas. New research uses ancient DNA to trace the origins of pathogens found in Mexico City back to Africa.

This week on Undisciplined we're talking about disability and accessibility in ancient Greece. You might think that accommodations for disabled people are a relatively new concept, but compelling new research suggests that ancient Greeks were thinking about accessibility as far back as the 4th century BC. Scholars found evidence that ancient architects built ramps specifically to help those with l...

We all dream, but why? And what do our dreams reveal about our waking lives? Since the beginning of human history, dreams have played a pivotal role in helping humans make sense of the world. What role do dreams play in our modern lives? This week, we'll be exploring the history of and science behind dreaming. Sidarta Ribeiro is the author of a new book called Oracle of Night - The History and Sci...