As I enter the Microscopy Services Laboratory (MSL), a soft southern accent greets me: “Come in- want a cucumber? Help yourself!” Dr. Bob Bagnell, the faculty director of the MSL,…
Continue ReadingTraditionally, plant ecologists seeking to better understand plant communities looked up (at light availability or precipitation patterns), across the landscape (at elevation or topography), and down (at leaf litter depth…
Continue ReadingIf you have any interest in science and have ever contemplated your existence within the confines of this universe, chances are that you’ve come across an interactive Flash-based animation called…
Continue ReadingThis year’s Nobel Prizes in Medicine were awarded to William C. Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura, and Youyou Tu whose work to develop novel therapies for the treatment of globally devastating parasitic…
Continue ReadingA new project kicked off this July as researchers across four institutions joined forces with local start-up companies, consultants, and coastal utilities to explore how a process that occurs naturally…
Continue ReadingIt sounds like medicine from a futuristic, sci-fi hospital: nanoparticles that deliver drug therapies and cells that can fight cancer or promote organ regeneration. However, by combining engineering and pharmaceutical…
Continue ReadingWe like to think of the Universe as static. Our time is very short compared to the age of the Universe. But there are processes in space that happen on…
Continue ReadingHindsight is always 20/20, especially in the field of science. Given what we know now, it seems crazy that people used to think the world was flat. The realm of…
Continue ReadingAs scientists, many of us have read a paper, been inspired by the glamorous data, carefully followed the methods section in order to replicate the results in our own hands,…
Continue ReadingPuppies are cute. We don’t often get to see them in utero, but now we can, thanks to this sweet radiograph courtesy of my mom, a Labradoodle breeder at Red…
Continue ReadingAs a young adult living in Carolina, I have come to associate summer with intolerable heat, delicious watermelon, and…the start of wedding season. Two friends of mine got married recently…
Continue ReadingIt is well known that the Moon is responsible for the tides on Earth. The effects of the tides at the Earth’s surface are predictable, but the effects of tides…
Continue ReadingI am not a morning person. Often, rising from bed seems like harder work than any experiment I will do in the coming day. Coffee helps, but my morning shower…
Continue ReadingRequiem for a Western Blot: A Haiku on Reversing the Positive and Negative Electrodes Two weeks to prepare It’s time to transfer this gel Data finally? Excitement building Put the…
Continue ReadingThe image before you is known as Darwin’s tree of life. Today, most scientists immediately recognize it as a basic idea in evolutionary theory; yet when Darwin drew it in…
Continue ReadingNo one can accuse the opah, Lampris guttatus, of being a cold fish. Nor could one call it a cold-hearted fish. Even if it were the most emotionally distant and…
Continue ReadingSpeaker: Mark Derewicz, Science Communications Manager at UNC School of Medicine/UNC Health Care Date: May 26th, 2015 Time: 5:30 PM Location: Bondurant Hall, Room G030 Event Link: https://swac.web.unc.edu/event/mark-derewicz-seminar/ Last month,…
Continue ReadingNon-scientist friends and relatives often ask me whether I am “curing” cancer, and question why the cure for cancer doesn’t already exist following decades of funding for research. Worse, some…
Continue Reading