Puerto Rico’s Breaking Point
After Hurricane Maria swept across Puerto Rico in 2017, millions of people lost power — some for nearly a year. But the blackout wasn’t just the work of a powerful hurricane. Decades of debt, ...
A Solution for Seagrass
Seagrasses are vital habitats in North Carolina coastal waters, but their numbers have dwindled over the years. A team at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences is exploring what type of seagrass ...
Carnivorous Conservation
Native only to a 90-mile inland radius around Wilmington, the Venus flytrap is a symbol of the Atlantic coastal plain’s unique ecology — and a contender for the federal endangered species list. ...
Trapped on the Surface
In the past decade, the Cape Fear River has become more susceptible to algal blooms — a potential public health concern for more than 1.5 million people relying on the river as a drinking water ...
Fighting Fire with Fire
In its mission to inspire understanding, appreciation, and conservation of plants, the North Carolina Botanical Garden conducts a series of controlled burns each year to manage wildfires and maintain ...
A Dual Focus
After a 21-year career in the U.S. Army, John Bechtold is now a PhD student in UNC’s Department of American Studies, using photography as a means to discuss American public memory and cultural ...
Tuned into Neuroscience
There are a host of ways neuroscientists can study the brain. Some analyze its chemistry, others its structure. UNC researcher Flavio Frohlich examines its electrical system, what he calls the ...
One Size Won’t Fit All
Nearly 35 percent of Americans are considered obese — a diagnosis that has become so common the American Medical Association recognizes it as a chronic disease. While the diagnosis is the same for ...
Soldering Learning Leaks
New research from Carolina Demography shows how students “leak out” of the postsecondary educational pipeline and examines education outcomes at North Carolina public schools, identifying where ...
The Known Unknowns
In 2016, a group of North Carolina researchers published evidence of high rates of PFAS in the Cape Fear River basin. While this unregulated family of chemicals is used in the production of everyday ...
Unearthing Environmental Research
Environmental education and research have deep roots at Carolina, but a lot has changed since the natural sciences came to campus almost 200 years ago. From the creation of a sanitary engineering ...
A Father for Social Science
The Odum Institute, the first social science research center in the world, has trained and supported hundreds of researchers specializing in everything from anthropology to city and regional planning ...