ANTHROPOLOGY - In January 2020, a prestigious scientific journal published a paper that revived a long-discredited theory that a group of marauding cannibals from South America descended on islands of the Caribbean circa A.D. 800, terrorizing local populations.

PSYCHOLOGY - Polished white rice is a staple of diets in Southeast Asia, which poses a serious public health problem because the grain has been stripped of its vitamins and minerals during processing, according to new research by UO scientists.

PSYCHOLOGY - Elliot Berkman, a psychology professor and associate managing director of the Center for Translational Neuroscience at the UO, wants to find out if a new technique, one that asks smokers to focus on the big picture, may help with smoking cessation.

BIOLOGY - Gabriel Luna-Arvizu, a doctoral student in the lab of UO biology professor Dan Grimes and the Institute of Molecular Biology, has received a Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study. The highly competitive national fellowship is awarded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY - The Human Performance Alliance weaves together three synergistic scientific programs to accelerate high-impact advances in human performance: scientific moonshots, innovation hubs, and agility projects.

HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY - A new study led by a UO researcher is raising the alarm that physically demanding work in hot temperatures could increase rates of kidney disease in the United States among workers who toil outdoors.

EARTH SCIENCES - Just three years after reporting the first-ever dinosaur fossil in Oregon, a team of excavators led by a UO geologist has uncovered a second bone, this one 103 million years old, at a quarry on public lands near Mitchell in Eastern Oregon.

BIOLOGY - The question of how reproductive cells like sperm and eggs maintain their DNA integrity during development is at the heart of a new study by student researchers in the lab of molecular biologist Diana Libuda.

ECONOMICS - Those who are strongly skeptical about climate change are unlikely to change their minds for many years to come, according to a new study by University of Oregon environmental economist Grant McDermott.

BIOLOGY - A group of UO biologists has developed a promising new model to study how underlying conditions exacerbate the health issues caused by COVID-19. The key to the model’s potential is the use of zebrafish, because they have the same cellular components that the virus uses to infect humans.