homenews

DOE funds Materials Consortia which includes the University of Utah

January 17, 2025

Crabtree's announcement through the DOE's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) recently detailed that $45 million has been awarded in federal funding for six projects to create regional consortia to accelerate the development of critical mineral and materials (CMM) supply chains including novel non-fuel carbon-based products from secondary and unconventional feedstocks.

Realizing the value of secondary and unconventional feedstocks, such as coal and coal by-products, effluent waters from oil and gas development, and acid mine drainage will enable the U.S. to rebuild domestic supply chains for CMM. By focusing on abundant American secondary and unconventional sources, these investments will support dependable and enduring supplies for American manufacturing and production of technologies essential to clean energy and the nation’s defense.

Safeguarding national security

Utah coal seam in core, with yellow material showing high resin content in coal. Credit: Lauren Birgenheier

“DOE is investing in collaborative regional projects to help us realize our nation’s full potential for recovery of these vital resources," continues Crabtree, "while creating high-wage jobs and delivering environmental benefits for communities across the United States.”

The six selected projects will build upon the work of DOE’s Carbon Ore, Rare Earth and Critical Minerals (CORE-CM) Initiative, expanding the focus from the basin scale to cover eight regions across the nation. Teams consist of partners such as private industry; universities; local, state, and federal government; local communities; and Tribes and Tribal organizations who will develop and implement strategies that enable each U.S. region to realize its economic critical minerals and materials potential, including valuable non-fuel carbon-based products. Principal investigator Michael Free of the U's Department of Materials Science and Engineering will head up this important work in the Rocky Mountains known as Region 6.

The U.S. depends heavily on foreign sources for critical materials used for many of the electronic devices, vehicles, and clean energy technology we rely on. "There is a corresponding need to produce these critical materials domestically," says Free. "This project is designed to assess potential critical materials resources in locations in the Rocky Mountain Region where mining has or is already taking place with an emphasis on resources related to coal." Formally titled, "Assessment, Characterization, and Planning for Carbon Ore and Critical Minerals/Materials Resources Utilization in the Rocky Mountain Region," the U's plan intends also to evaluate sedimentary-hosted minerals, waste-related materials and other potential value-added materials.

Resulting data from these assessments and evaluations will be shared through the DOE Energy Data Exchange database to help formulate regional strategies for business commercialization, workforce readiness, technology assessments, stakeholder outreach, energy equity and justice, ongoing energy transformation, and community impacts. A "roadmap" will then be presented for technology innovation centers.

Portable X-ray fluorescence analysis of a coal sample used to evaluate critical mineral content. Credit: Lauren Birgenheier

Finally, the university's plan is to coordinate CORE-CM regional research efforts, DOE–NETL working groups, and the Critical Materials Collaborative, a new mode of connection created by the DOE in 2023 to improve and increase communication and coordination among DOE, government agencies and stakeholders working on critical materials projects.

Those regional efforts include previously funded CORE-CM Phase I project leaders from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, University of Wyoming and the U along with the CMM metal ore mining geology expertise of Colorado School of Mines. Free adds that "a regional-scale assessment, sampling and characterization of CMM resource types will contribute datasets to achieve DOE objectives."

Lauren Birgenheier, team leader and U associate professor in the Department of Geology & Geophysics, explains that “the CORE-CM Phase I project efforts conducted over the past three years provide a solid foundation of CMM resource characterization data across the Rocky Mountain Region that will be built out into a more robust understanding of CMM resource volumes in key prospective geographic areas and geologic settings.”

Community benefits

An important part of the initiative is to develop a community benefits plan which aims to provide access to project opportunities for people of all backgrounds, forge equitable engagement with disadvantaged communities and foster a teaming partner culture of inclusion.

Funded at $9,598,204 ($7.5 million from the DOE alone), the selected U-led project anticipates outcomes that include information to help industries and communities to realize the full commercialization opportunities and economic value from a secure, reliable, and sustainable domestic supply of CMM and coal-related materials sourced from Region 6.

Other project partners include 47G,Colorado Geological Survey, Idaho National Lab, Idaho State Geological Survey, JWP Consulting, Lamar University, Los Alamos National Lab, Montana Technological University, Sandia National Lab, SonoAsh, Utah Geological Survey, Utah State University Eastern and Wolverine Fuels.

by David Pace

You can read more about the critical materials work in the Mike Free lab here.

‘Brand new physics’ for next gen spintronics

January 16, 2025

Eric Montoya

Traditional electronics use the charge of electrons to encode, store and transmit information. Spintronic devices utilize both the charge and spin-orientation of electrons. By assigning a value to electron spin (up=0 and down=1), spintronic devices offer ultra-fast, energy-efficient platforms.

To develop viable spintronics, physicists must understand the quantum properties within materials. One property, known as spin-torque, is crucial for the electrical manipulation of magnetization that’s required for the next generations of storage and processing technologies.

Researchers at the University of Utah and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), have discovered a newtype of spin–orbit torque. The study that published in Nature Nanotechnology on Jan. 15, 2025, demonstrates a new way to manipulate spin and magnetization through electrical currents, a phenomenon that they’ve dubbed the anomalous Hall torque.

“This is brand new physics, which on its own is interesting, but there’s also a lot of potential new applications that go along with it,” said Eric Montoya, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Utah and lead author of the study. “These self-generated spin-torques are uniquely qualified for new types of computing like neuromorphic computing, an emerging system that mimics human brain networks.”

Hall of torques

Electrons have miniscule magnetic fields that, like planet Earth, are dipolar—some spins are oriented north (“up”) or south (“down”) or somewhere in between. Like magnets, opposite poles attract while like poles repel. Spin-orientation torque refers to the speed at which the electron spins around a fixed point.

In some materials, electricity will sort electrons based on their spin orientation. The distribution of spin-orientation, known as symmetry, will influence the material’s properties, such as the directional flow of a ferromagnet’s magnetic field.

Anomalous Hall torque is related to the well-known anomalous Hall effect, discovered by Edwin Hall in 1881. The anomalous Hall effect describes how electrons are scattered asymmetrically when they pass through a magnetic material, leading to a charge current that flows 90 degrees to the flow of an external electric current. It turns out, an analogous process occurs for spin—when an external electrical current is applied to a material, a spin current flows 90 degrees to the flow of electrical current with the spin-orientation along the direction of the magnetization.

“It really comes down to the symmetry. The different Hall effects describe the symmetry of how efficiently we can control the spin-orientation in a material,” Montoya said. “You can have one effect, or all effects in the same material. As material scientists, we can really tune these properties to get devices to do different things.”

Read the full story by Lisa Potter in @ The U.

New Bio Faculty: Luiza Aparecido

January 13, 2025

Born and raised in the São Paulo State in Brazil, her journey to the University of Utah is rooted in her lifelong passion for plants. “Ever since I was a young kid growing up in Brazil, I've always been interested in what plants are doing,” she shares. “And when it comes to the type of work that I do, I just want plants to always be around. I love plants very much, and I know that we need them for our livelihood, and their role in the ecosystem is very important.”

Aparecido’s educational path began in forestry engineering in Brazil where she was introduced to undergraduate research, inspired by her father’s career as a university professor. She then pursued a master’s degree studying the ecology of the Amazon rainforest, during which her fascination with plant ecology and physiology deepened. “When I was there, that's when I started getting more in tune with plant ecology and plant physiology, and how these fields are crucial in understanding the structure and function of forests,” she explains. However, her academic journey was not without challenges. She almost stepped away from academia before deciding to apply for a PhD program at Texas A&M University where she earned her doctorate in Ecosystem Science and Management. Her doctoral work led her to explore the complexities of plant interactions with leaf wetness in the tropics of Costa Rica.

After earning her PhD, Aparecido completed a postdoctoral position at Arizona State University where she shifted her focus to arid land ecology — a surprising contrast to her roots in the lush Amazon rainforest. “When I moved to Arizona State, I was doing preliminary work in the Sonoran Desert, and that's when I realized there's so much we don't know about these plants that are very unique and very adapted to these ecosystems,” she explains. “How are they going to look in the future? Are they really as resistant as people think they are? Are they even resilient?”

At the U, Aparecido’s research addresses crucial questions about plant resilience in urban and natural landscapes, particularly in the face of climate change. Her current research is crucial for understanding plants’ response to heat and drought stress, such as plant adaptations to urban heat islands, a common phenomena in the Southwest region of the US.

These responses can be measured through leaf gas exchange rates (photosynthesis and transpiration), stem water use and hydraulics, plant morphological traits and local microclimatic conditions. “When it comes to urban plants and plants that we see up on the hillside, understanding how resilient they are to heatwaves and drier conditions matters for restoration and conservation,” she says.

Aparecido’s work also delves into invasion ecology, examining what makes certain plants invasive and how they might outcompete native species. “Invasion is something that's going to be inevitable with climate change,” she says. “We’re trying to figure out what happens at the physiological level that allows invasive plants to dominate over native ones.”

Aparecido’s research has significant implications for both ecological preservation and agriculture. She emphasizes the importance of developing drought- and heat-tolerant plants and understanding local plant adaptations to inform conservation efforts. She also highlights the challenges of maintaining diverse urban forests in a warming climate. “When you have a large number of the same species, that makes it more attractive for pathogens or insects to come in, but it also means that there is less variability in functions and traits, which might be detrimental when all plants are stressed at the same time” she explains. “So the more diversity you have in plant communities the better off they will be in an ecosystem. I’m talking about neighborhood scale but also in your own lawn. The more diverse you go, the better.” Aparecido emphasizes that in the world of plants, small changes can go a very long way.

Looking for patterns

Beyond her research, Aparecido is a dedicated teacher and mentor. She currently supervises three graduate students working on projects ranging from the physiology of invasive Russian olive trees to the behavior of tumbleweeds and hybrid oak resilience. She is also teaching a course on ecosystem ecology this spring. “One thing about my job that I love is looking for patterns,” she says. “Plant processes are embedded in modeling for climate projections and plant distribution projections because of these patterns.” In her lab and classroom she strives to provide her students with extensive tools and knowledge to measure plants' health as they adapt to environmental challenges.

Looking ahead, Aparecido is eager to collaborate with researchers and organizations at the U, including at the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy and Red Butte Garden. She values the opportunity to work alongside like-minded colleagues who share her passion for understanding and protecting plant ecosystems. Aparecido’s enthusiasm for plants and nature extends beyond her work. She enjoys exploring Utah’s unique landscapes through road trips and hikes, often accompanied by her dog, Cookie. “I think I always felt very connected to the land,” she reflects. “And I just love working with plants and understanding the environment through them.”

As Luiza Aparecido settles into her new role, she remains committed to following her passion for plants and inspiring others to do the same.

by Julia St. Andre

How snowflakes get their intricate shape

January 13, 2025

From stars to needles to amorphous globs, scientists are demystifying a snowflake’s complex construction — showing how factors such as temperature can influence their shape. Some researchers have already observed how a warming world can drive structural changes, including flakes that melt quicker, fall faster and gravitate toward specific shapes.

“Snowflakes are far more varied and interesting than we had previously imagined,” said Tim Garrett, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Utah.

The science of snowflake shapes

Tim Garrett

The creation of all snowflakes begins with liquid water droplets in a cloud. As the temperature dips below freezing, some cloud droplets begin to freeze around dust particles in the sky and form hexagonal crystals. All snowflakes are six-sided because water molecules bond with one another in a hexagonal lattice.

A crystal begins to grow by absorbing water vapor from the surrounding air. Other liquid droplets evaporate, adding more water vapor that the crystals can tap into to grow larger. As the crystals get bigger and heavier, they start to fall.

In the 1930s, Japanese physicist Ukichiro Nakaya — who famously described snowflakes as “letters from heaven” — created the first artificial snowflake and found that different snowflakes form under different conditions.

But why do certain shapes appear at different temperatures? Growing snowflakes in his lab, Libbrecht uncovered processes that help explain this decades-long mystery.

For example, at different temperatures, flat, smooth surfaces — called facets — can appear around the crystal on certain sides. Imagine an even glossy surface like on a diamond face but on ice.

Water molecules have a hard time sticking to these flat surfaces because there are less available chemical bonds to connect to. As a result, these facets act like shields and prevent crystals from growing in certain directions.

If these smooth surfaces are on the top and bottom (called basal facets) of the crystal, the snowflake is more likely to grow as a column or needle. If they are set up around the sides of the hexagon (called prism facets), then the snowflake is more likely to grow as a plate.

But our warming world is also influencing how snowflakes — including the most common ones — form.

“That’s all going on at once. It takes about 100,000 droplets to make a good sized snowflake,” said Ken Libbrecht, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology and snowflake consultant for the movie “Frozen.” The process can take about 30 to 45 minutes.

Read the full Washington Post article which features three-dimensional animations of snowflake architecture.

Riley Peck BS’09 named new DWR director

January 13, 2025

A resident of Eagle Mountain, Utah County, Peck started working for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources in 2006 as a native aquatics technician. In 2009, he transitioned to working as a wildlife biologist before eventually being promoted to Central Region wildlife manager in 2016. He worked in that role until 2019, when he became the once-in-a-lifetime species coordinator. Peck has served as the division's legislative liaison from 2019 until now.

With a bachelor's in biology from the University of Utah and a master's degree in plant and wildlife science from Brigham Young University, Peck has always had a passion for the outdoors and wildlife conservation.

"I have always loved wildlife, fishing, hunting, camping and all things outdoors and always had a desire to operate in that space," Peck said. "Getting to do what I am passionate about as a living has been a great privilege, and I feel truly lucky that I have had the opportunity to work in wildlife management. At the DWR, we have made a lot of strides to gather some of the best wildlife data in the entire U.S. As director, I'd like us to continue to build on that and use that information to manage our wildlife species in Utah even more effectively."

"During his 19-year career with the DWR, Riley has garnered a lot of experience and knowledge and has also proven himself as an exceptional employee — he was recently named the 2024 DNR employee of the year. I feel confident in his ability to oversee the management of Utah's fish and wildlife," Ferry said.

Peck grew up in Riverton, and enjoys recreating in the outdoors hunting, fishing and camping with his wife and kids.

Peck replaces former DWR Director J Shirley, who retired Dec. 31, 2024.

In Detox: Woodrats use ‘quantity over quality’ as a plan

January 9, 2025

Part of the team doing field work in California to capture wild woodrats.

The critter’s constitution has astounded biologists and represents a decades-long debate—over evolutionary time, how do animals adapt to a deadly diet? Do detoxification enzymes become more specialized or more abundant?

The study, led by University of Utah (U) biologists, is the first to pinpoint the specific genes and enzymes that allow woodrats to eat the near-lethal food without obvious harm. The scientists compared the detoxification pathways of two woodrat species that encountered creosote independently in their evolutionary histories to those who had never encountered creosote. Before creosote invaded parts of the Southwest, woodrat populations had a smaller number of genes that coded for enzymes that process creosote toxins. As creosote grew to dominate the landscape, natural selection drove a detox-gene duplication bonanza, resulting in massive increases in the numbers of genes that produce enzymes that eliminate creosote toxins. Curiously, these enzymes did not become more specialized to detoxify creosote—there was just much more of them.

The authors propose that gene duplication is an important mechanism by which animals initially adapt to new environmental pressures.

“These woodrats have only been exposed to creosote bush for about 15,000 years—in an evolutionary timescale, that’s very little time,” said Dylan Klure, postdoctoral researcher at the U and lead author of the study. “Some other changes may happen in the future, but right now, the duplication innovation is what’s allowed them to become so toxin-resistant so quickly.”

The study published on Jan. 10, 2025, in the journal Science.

There are two primary hypotheses for how animals evolve tolerance to toxic chemicals. The first is that new DNA mutations modify existing detoxification enzymes to metabolize toxins faster and more efficiently—a lower quantity, higher quality approach. The second is that detoxification genes and the enzymes they produce don’t change much, but duplicate in number over evolutionary time, allowing animals to produce more detoxification enzymes in response to toxin consumption—a greater quantity, lower quality approach. Previous research found that herbivorous insects process toxins using specialized enzymes that metabolize chemicals faster. Since the 1970s, biologists have favored this “enzyme quality over quantity” hypothesis. This study found the exact opposite.

“We discovered that creosote-feeding woodrats don’t have specialized enzymes to metabolize creosote toxins, just more—many more, and from a wide variety of existing detox enzymes,” said Denise Dearing, U biologist and senior author of the study. “These duplications of existing genes increase the quantity of detoxification enzymes produced, enabling more toxin to be eliminated.”

Coyote numbers are often higher in areas where they are hunted

January 9, 2025

Coyote populations across the United States are influenced by a number of factors, but surprisingly their abundance is found to be higher in areas that allow hunting of the predator, according to research by a University of Utah wildlife biologist and colleagues in other states.

As U.S. landscapes became increasingly plowed and paved over the past couple centuries, wildlife has become less abundant thanks to the loss and fragmentation of habitat. But not coyotes, North America’s most successful mid-sized predator, which have expanded their range despite eradication campaigns and rapid urbanization.

Coyotes are bold generalists, eating anything from seeds, trash, roadkill, rodents, deer fawn, even pets, and fill niches left vacant by the elimination of bears, wolves and cougars, according to co-author Austin Green, a researcher with the U’s Science Research Initiative and former graduate student in the School of Biological Sciences.

It is reasonable to expect hunting to reduce species abundance, especially in conjunction with other anthropogenic factors that spurred the wave of Holocene extinctions. Unregulated hunting, after all, resulted in the disappearance of the passenger pigeon, dodo and monk seal, and near-extinctions of many other now-rare species, including iconic megafauna such as the American bison and white rhinoceros.

Coyotes, on the other hand, have displayed a pronounced resiliency in regions, such as Utah where hunting and trapping these predators is heavily subsidized and barely regulated, according to the findings based on extensive camera surveys.

“This is corroborating a lot of other evidence that direct hunting and intervention is actually not a really good way to manage coyote populations, if the goal is to decrease their abundance,” Green said.

The new study, which was funded in part by the U’s Global Change and Sustainability Center, was led by the University of New Hampshire (UNH). It relied on data compiled by Snapshot USA, a sprawling collaborative campaign to sample wild mammal populations with motion-triggered trap cameras arrayed in transects each fall.

Alumnus Paul Keim, 2024 Lark Lecturer

January 8, 2025

One of this year's distinguished alumni awardees, Keim was a natural pick for the distinction, not only because of his work with Lark in the 80s but because of his auspicious career in The Pathogen and Microbiome Institute (PMI), an impressive cross-disciplinary research unit at Northern Arizona University where, after graduating from NAU with a BS, he returned to and has been on the faculty for the past 36 years.

PMI is closely associated with TGen North, with whom the institute shares infrastructure to maximize Arizona’s investment in science.

At the U Keim studied everything from soybeans to kangaroo rats. “We did everything," he says about the lab’s variety. “It’s what I call either the Lark curse or the Lark blessing… Gordon was willing to work on any interesting biological problem.” This was before Keim found himself working in infectious diseases, in particular with the deadly bacterium anthrax and later cholera and more recently the SARS-COVID-19 coronavirus, among others. At one highly elevated juncture he would find himself on the world stage as, following the attacks on American soil September 11, 2001, letters laced with anthrax spores started showing up in people’s mail. Five individuals eventually died from it.

The "Father of the Dept. of Biology," now the School of Biological Sciences, K. Gordon Lark (1930-2020). The annual Lark Lecture is in his honor. Credit: Ben Okun

How the story played out during the era of the “Anthrax Letters,” the title of a recent Netflix docudrama in which Keim is prominently featured, has all of the intrigue you would expect of a compressed but harrowing era starting in October 2021. It was a time when the country was rattled to the bone and saw terrorists, it seemed, around every corner–and in every letter delivered by the postal service. It was through the use of genomic technology and evolutionary principles at PMI and TGen North that Keim and his team were able to trace the specific, professionally processed spores, used in the attacks to an American microbiologist, vaccinologist, Bruce Ivins, a professional acquaintance of Keim’s and a known expert in the handling of anthrax spores.

Keim was readying to testify in court when Ivins took his life. “Whether or not Bruce Ivins actually did it or not is still hotly debated. But the Justice Department is convinced that he did it and they shut the whole thing down and destroyed all the evidence. So all the evidence that we were analyzing, all the anthrax strains, all the letters,” he says with some disappointment if not bitterness “... it's gone.”

Being pressed into the harsh and sometimes unforgiving media light (and hype) has been a defining feature of Keim’s career, but it has always been unapologetically rooted in the ethic of scientific inquiry that relentlessly follows the facts, honors the data and reaches conclusions that counter sacred paradigms in different scientific fields. His mentor Gordon Lark would be proud.

Demonstrating the magic of physics

January 7, 2025

Beehler, who is the Lecture Demonstration Specialist for the Department of Physics & Astronomy, manages the university’s large collection of demonstration equipment, runs demonstrations for instructors and teaches a class of his own, entitled The Way Things Work, a kind of physics show-and-tell.

The concepts he demonstrates are old – one law that predicts the effects of electromagnetism dates back to 1834 – and don’t really change, but he says the job doesn’t get old.

“No, I like the concept so much this doesn’t get boring to me,” Beehler said.

To demonstrate the pressure of our atmosphere, he puts a student (all but his head) in a plastic bag and evacuates the air inside. With the pressure of the atmosphere pressing down on him, the students cannot move.

To show that pressure in a confined liquid is transferred throughout, aka “Pascal’s Principle”, a student on a leaf-blower-powered hovercraft floats across the classroom floor.

The semester ends with his big finale. Also, Sprach Zarathustra (also the theme from “2001 – A Space Odyssey”) plays.

Beehler holds two fluorescent tubes and inches them towards a large Van de Graaff generator until they attract loud, crackling bolts of purple lightning, hundreds of thousands of volts, lighting up the bulbs and turning the teacher into a modern-day Zeus.

The demonstration generates laughter and a round of applause.

“Sometimes the students will think, ‘Oh, that’s magic.’ Physics seems like magic. It’s just magic of the universe. It just naturally works that way,” he said.

Below: Watch the KSL-TV video of the above story and experience the magic of Beehler.

Demonstrating the magic of physics

Why mobile farm technology won the 2024 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize

January 7, 2025

This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism.

A "pyrolizer," a machine that can apply high heat without oxygen to crop waste and create a soil additive called biochar, dumps loads of the substance into bags. Applied Carbon, a Texas startup, has received a $500,000 prize from the U's Wilkes Center to develop the technology as a way to store carbon. Credit: Applied Carbon

The stalks and husks of corn plants — the waste product left by combine harvesters — could be a key tool in the fight against climate change, and the University of Utah is putting up $500,000 to test the idea.

The U.’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy recently awarded its half-million-dollar Wilkes Climate Launch Prize to Applied Carbon, a Texas-based startup.

Applied Carbon won the prize for its mobile farm technology, which turns crop waste into a soil additive that decreases the need for fertilizer and stores the remaining carbon in the earth’s soil.

William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center, said one of the main selling points of Applied Carbon’s technology is its potential to be made for scale.

“The scalability is very exciting, and you can see a path for them to really scale up across many different agricultural fields in the next couple of years,” he said.

The crop waste is produced when combine harvesters sail through tall corn fields, their rotating blades slicing through the stalks, filtering them into the machine’s mouth, where its spinning cylinders rip the corn kernels from the husk and stems. The combine saves the kernels of corn in its body and spits out the stalk and husk remnants, leaving it to waste on the flattened field.

The prize, one of the largest university-run climate prizes in the world, was created in 2023 to help jump-start promising climate solution ideas. At a September reception in partnership with the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine, Anderegg awarded the prize money to Jason Aramburu, Applied Carbon’s CEO and co-founder.

At the reception, Aramburu said that “as a startup company … there’s often a funding gap, particularly in this sector, to get your technology to market.” He later added that the prize money will help the company produce more of their biochar machines and get them into the field.

Applied Carbon now has four mobile pyrolizers, a machine that can reach high temperatures without oxygen, and the company will apply the prize money to its field operations in Texas, Aramburu said. These operations, he said, work in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“We’ve got about 4,000 acres of corn that we’re working with. We will test our equipment [in Texas] and also test how effective the biochar is on the soil,” he said.

The yield and soil chemistry testing, Aramburu said, will determine if the process works and to measure the impact of the technology. The project, in its first multi-season trial run, is expected to remove 100,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2026, he said.

Biochar, a charcoal-like substance derived from biomass waste, is made through pyrolysis, a heat-driven process that uses virtually no oxygen and stores carbon in the waste product, according to Utah State University. Biochar, Anderegg added, is promising as a nature-based tool for fighting climate change because its carbon storage is stable and lasts hundreds of years.

“By contrast, a huge number of companies and governments are interested in tree planting, … but forests are at increasing risk from fire and drought and climate change,” he said. “We really worry about planting trees in one area that may be dead in 10 to 20 years.”

By Giovanni Radtke

You can read the full story for free at Amplify or with a subscription in the Salt Lake Tribune.

College of Science

DOE funds Materials Consortia which includes the University of Utah

Funding for critical materials consortia

“Rebuilding a domestic supply chain for critical minerals and materials here at home will both safeguard our national security and support the continued development of a clean energy and industrial economy,” says Brad Crabtree, Department of Energy (DOE).

Safeguarding national security

Community benefits

‘Brand new physics’ for next gen spintronics

‘Brand new physics’ for next generation spintronics

Our data-driven world demands more — more capacity, more efficiency, more computing power. To meet society’s insatiable need for electronic speed, physicists have been pushing the burgeoning field of spintronics.

Hall of torques

New Bio Faculty: Luiza Aparecido

New Bio Faculty: Plant Ecologist Luiza Aparecido

Luiza Aparecido is a new assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences and an expert in plant ecophysiology, focusing on how plants respond to a changing climate.

Looking for patterns

How snowflakes get their intricate shape

How snowflakes get their intricate shapes

Snowflakes are like letters from the sky, each crystal a note describing the atmosphere as it falls to the ground. They float effortlessly, but their creation is one of nature’s most complicated physics feats.

The science of snowflake shapes

Riley Peck BS’09 named new DWR director

Riley Peck BS'09 named new DWR director

Utah Department of Natural Resources Executive Director Joel Ferry named Riley Peck as the new director for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, effective Monday, Jan. 13.

In Detox: Woodrats use ‘quantity over quality’ as a plan

Woodrats use ‘quantity over quality’ as a Detox plan

Woodrats are one of the only animals that can tolerate large quantities of creosote, a shrub with leaves coated in a chemical cocktail of poisonous resin.

Coyote numbers are often higher in areas where they are hunted

Coyote numbers are often higher in areas where they are hunted

Counterintuitive findings are based on images from hundreds of trap cameras deployed in nationwide campaign to document wildlife.

Alumnus Paul Keim, 2024 Lark Lecturer

2024 Lark Lecturer: Paul Keim

In October, Paul Keim, one of the longest-serving postdoctoral researchers in the lab run by the late K. Gordon Lark, was tapped to present the annual Lark Lecture at the School of Biological Sciences Science Retreat.

Demonstrating the magic of physics

Demonstrating the magic of physics

At the University of Utah, Adam Beehler shrink-wrapped a student and levitated another with a leaf blower. It was all part of a day’s work for the university’s physics demonstrator.

Why mobile farm technology won the 2024 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize

How mobile farm technology won the 2024 Wilkes Prize

A Texas company, winner of the 2024 Wilkes Climate Prize, aims to develop technology to create 'biochar' as a soil additive that could benefit farmers.