Research Highlights

Drs. Scoty Hearst and Trent Selby, professors in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi, are analyzing fish caught out of the Lower Mississippi River Basin to determine the level of toxic metals that accumulate in their flesh as part of a study funded by the Mississippi IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (Mississippi INBRE). Their results, published in a recent issue of Elsevier, indicated that some fish species, such as gar, contained levels of toxic metals exceeding safe consumption limits outlined by the World Health Organization, including lead and mercury.

Highlight for Iowa Space Grant Consortium and Iowa NASA EPSCoR supported work at University of Northern Iowa! Dr. Joshua Sebree's team is researching how life survives in extreme environments by studying water and mineral formations in South Dakota's Wind Cave National Park.

CLIMBS: The Documentary is now available to watch on the KY NSF EPSCoR YouTube channel!

If you're curious about why and how KY NSF EPSCoR plans to build climate resilience in Kentucky, this documentary will answer all of your questions.

A study published today from the University of Kansas in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis shows most infant formulas on the U.S. market contain primarily added sugars rather than the healthier, naturally occurring lactose found in cow-milk base that would be best for babies because it’s closest to human breast milk.

On Saturday, January 25, 2025, U.S. Virgin Islands teachers were invited to join a full-day, in-person professional development workshop titled: Exploring the Deep Ocean With NOAA.

Hosted by VI-EPSCoR and Virgin Islands Marine Advisory Service (VIMAS), Ms. Suraida Nanez-James, an educator contracted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), presented the training to twenty-seven K-12 teachers from across the territory. The workshop explored how and why we explore the ocean and the tools and technologies that drive how we conduct expeditions into some of the most remote places on the planet. Teachers of biology, social studies, marine biology, arts and math, among other subjects, received lesson plans and fact sheets and, engaged in hands-on activities all designed to be shared in the classroom and adapted to different age groups and subjects.

Nevada is known colloquially as the “Sagebrush State”—a nod to the dominant habitat that covers tens of millions of acres in the state and nearly one-third of the continental United States. And while it can be tempting to view this expanse as a monotonous sweep of land dominated by a single species, sagebrush ecosystems are in fact quite diverse, supporting hundreds of species uniquely adapted to a hot and arid climate.

To strengthen Hawaiʻi’s flood and wildfire early warning systems and improve the state’s response to natural disasters and climate change impacts, a team of researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, in partnership with the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), is installing an advanced network of 100 weather monitoring stations across the state to enhance weather and climate monitoring and forecasting. The data collected can also be used for water resource management, agriculture, ranching, ecosystem and cultural resource protection and more.

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Dr. Emad Habib is leading a new $5.8 million research project to address increasing flood risks and disproportionate impacts of climate extremes along the U.S. Gulf region. The research is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR.

Getting a new variety of corn, tomato, soybean or other crop to market can be a long and costly effort, with breeders working to ensure the eventual product has the right mix of genetics that will let it withstand change, produce large amounts of fruit or seed and taste good. A new technology, developed with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, seeks to shorten that process and make it cheaper by taking advantage of naturally occurring transposable elements, or "jumping genes," within the plant's genome.

Whether it’s agriculture, astronomy, or medicine, Indigenous peoples are natural scientists and have long practiced science before the term “science” existed. Indigenous cultural traditions and ways of life are at the core of these practices.

As the North Dakota Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) program celebrates the 25th anniversary of its NATURE initiative — a program aimed at promoting STEM among tribal youth in North Dakota — it's a moment not only to commemorate past achievements but also to chart the course for the program's future.