News & Updates

Two University of Maine undergraduates are designing place-based education materials and K–12 curricula about the Grand Kankakee Marsh in Northern Indiana as part of a National Geographic Society grant.

The research is clear – talking is teaching. Parental responses to infant babbling can influence a child’s language development. Infants whose caregivers respond to what they think their babies are saying show an increase in advanced language sounds. However, research suggests by the time children are 2 years old, there is already a six-month gap in language understanding between children from higher-income and lower-income families, and by age four, the average child in a lower-income family might have 30 million fewer words of cumulative experience than the average child in a high-income family.

It may seem that the COVID-19 vaccine came from out of nowhere, but it actually underwent the same rigorous testing that all vaccines do. It’s safe. It’s effective. And it represents a huge step toward making life feel normal again, according to one West Virginia University vaccine expert.

The National Institutes of Health will fund new research examining racial and ethnic disparities in pregnancy-related complications and deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(link is external), approximately 700 women die each year in the United States from pregnancy-related complications. The grants to six institutions are expected to total over $21 million over five years, pending the availability of funds. The project is supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), and the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health.

KU scientists create new environmental video series for kids

Plastics are chemical compounds that have proven to be inordinately useful for humanity—disposable syringes for example. The problem is, they don’t degrade on a human timescale. And once discarded, they begin breaking down into micro- and nanoplastics and drift into the air and water, becoming virtually impossible to recover.

Critical University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization (UHERO) research to help Hawaiʻi on its path to economic recovery has received a $1.2-million boost in private support. UH President David Lassner said, “We are deeply grateful to our community partners for their robust support of UHERO and the critical economic research that takes place every day. UH expertise is absolutely essential to our pandemic recovery, and these philanthropic investments will help Hawaiʻi craft a sustainable and thriving path forward for our people across the islands.”

Dartmouth College is getting $2.4 million to research how the coronavirus has affected primary health care nationwide. The funding, announced Friday by New Hampshire’s congressional delegation, comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support research aimed at enhancing health care providers’ response to the pandemic.

This year saw more tropical systems in the Atlantic than any other year, and the 2020 wildfire season out West has been the worst on record. Those are symptoms of a larger issue, according to the latest episode of the On Good Authority podcast, which featured Jesse Keenan, associate professor and social scientist at Tulane University School of Architecture.

UNH joins dozens of the nation’s leading research institutions in the Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII), a $111 million public-private partnership launched Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020. Led by the University of Texas at San Antonio, CyManII is a five-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that aggregates the most advanced institutions researching smart and advanced manufacturing, secure automation and supply chains, workforce development and cybersecurity.