Science
Scientific discoveries and research
Why some Indigenous communities don't resist oil extraction in their territories
More than half of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been marked for oil drilling, overlapping with Indigenous territories and areas of high biodiversity. The ecological...
Global soil erosion outpaces natural recovery, report warns
Isaac Larsen, an associate professor in the College of Natural Sciences' Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, is a lead author of "Status of t...
Political orientation and institutional trust emerge as key factors in local wind energy support
Why does the expansion of wind energy sometimes meet with local resistance, even though renewable energy generally enjoys broad support? RIFS researcher Jörg Ra...
Game simulator shows how math can guide decisions when resources are limited
In "Bloons Tower Defense," the goal is to stop balloons from reaching the end of a track by strategically placing towers along the route. These towers vary in c...
'Digital ibuprofen' offers Chinese youth comfort through cute characters facing familiar struggles
In China, young people are encountering a myriad of challenges, from societal pressures around success to life in a highly surveilled society, that have led the...
Attention can't be bought, so brands turn to memes
The funniest post you saw this week may not have come from a friend; it may have come from a brand. Whether it is Kohl's, Wendy's, or Netflix, brands are behavi...
Unusual senses: The secret superpowers of amphibians and reptiles
The Surinam toad is one of the strangest frogs on Earth. Flat-bodied, tiny-eyed and adapted to the murky waters of the Amazon basin, it hunts well despite havin...
What a locust can teach us about how neuromodulators alter odor processing
When you walk into a bakery and smell fresh cookies, the enticing smell draws you in. After you eat a handful of cookies, though, the same smell likely doesn't...
Rhinos and elephants can cause huge problems if reintroduced badly—here's how to get it right
Moving large animals around is a seductive idea in conservation. If there are plenty of animals in one place and too few in another, moving some between the two...
Quantum interactions may have locked early universe's fields into existing energy states
The universe may be trapped in its own comfort zone, and a researcher in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has helped explain why it cannot seem t...
Forests are dying along North Carolina's coast—and it's speeding up
A new study finds that coastal forest loss in North Carolina's Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula began accelerating after 2010 and may still be speeding up. The study...
An iced coffee won't predict job performance—but it might reveal hiring bias
Imagine two candidates with identical qualifications interviewing for the same job. One arrives carrying a bottle of water, while the other walks in with an ice...