In dark rooms, surrounded by illuminated screens, figures scuttle, duck, and navigate through twisting corridors and mazes. This isn’t the elaborate setup of a teen gaming lair; rather, it’s a high-end virtual reality system built for neuroscience’s favorite mammals: rodents. Tour a neuroscience lab fifteen years ago and…

As children, we were all prodded to “eat our fruits and vegetables.” But in the future, will we be injecting plant life as well? Based on several discoveries to date, this very well may happen. Plants can be used in medications, including vaccines. Although plants also have numerous…

Maitê Ghazaleh Bucher, Ph.D., a Biology Professor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, has been awarded the Curious Science Writers Inaugural Educator Fellowship. Curious Science Writers (CSW) is an innovative science communications program for high school students hosted by Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), a…

Imagine you are a seasoned astronaut floating through the mystical blue abyss that is space, documenting the thousands of bright white stars that buzz relentlessly above your head. Suddenly, a shape you don’t recognize appears close by. Is it a rock? An alien spacecraft? A piece of debris?…

Being a binge-watching Netflix enthusiast and having a poor diet, Brian suffers from type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease that affects some 30 million people in the United States. Despite his renewed efforts to initiate a lifestyle change by eating better and exercising more…

You’ve likely heard about the many benefits of sleep. But you probably haven’t heard the latest. Scientists are currently investigating how sleep helps us navigate the world around us. Past research has shown that memory plays a major role in helping us move through space. If you remember…

Picture this: on your morning walk, a speeding car suddenly rams into you. Among other injuries, your liver is annihilated. You are rushed to the hospital, only for the doctors to say the damage is irreversible. That leaves one last option: replacing the organ entirely. The doctor breaks…

WHOOSH! A powerful wind sweeps across the prairie, engulfing all flora and fauna lying in its path. Yet, underneath the prairie soil, sleeping peacefully in its cozy winter burrow is the 13-lined ground squirrel (aka Ictidomys tridecemlineatus). The 13-lined ground squirrel hibernates every winter, passing into a deep,…

Each year the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves around 50 drugs for human use, some of which are submitted for consideration years in advance. It is a widely known fact that it can take a long time for drugs and vaccines to be approved for entering the…