Mar 27, 2026 Farm Progress

NC economists: Today’s ag downturn is different

Blake Brown, Hugh C. Kiger professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University, said agriculture has been on a continuum of change for a long time and past challenges still face agriculture. What’s different is that the policy environment today is much more volatile than 30 years ago. Arnie Oltmans, associate… 

Mar 27, 2026 The News & Observer

These 6 venomous snakes live in North Carolina. Here’s what they look like

Though some other snakes live far from people, copperheads “are happy to live around humans in natural and even disturbed areas around neighborhoods. Thus, copperheads are the most often encountered venomous snake species in the state,” Matt Bertone, director and entomologist at the Plant Disease and Insect Clinic at N.C. State University, told The News… 

Mar 27, 2026 ABC11

What sex is your tree? And what does it mean for pollen?

To help answer that, I reached out to Mark Weathington, director of the JC Raulston Arboretum at N.C. State University. He explained that many trees actually have both male and female reproductive parts on the same tree. They are known as Monoecious. However, some species do have separate male and female trees. More on that… 

Mar 27, 2026 Scientific American

Why you should keep getting mRNA vaccines

And mRNA is easily broken down by the body. Humans ingest mRNA all the time from the food we eat, but our digestive system deactivates it. “Cells have safeguards so that we don’t get invaded by nucleic acids that just happen to be about,” says Jennifer Pancorbo, an expert in pharmaceutical biomanufacturing at North Carolina… 

Mar 26, 2026 Interesting Engineering

Farm waste turned into battery-grade graphite could help US cut dependence on China

On March 25, 2026, researchers from the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) and North Carolina State University (NCSU) announced a breakthrough in graphite production. The team found a way to turn biomass—like forestry and agricultural waste—into high-quality graphite, the same material currently imported from China for batteries, steel, and advanced manufacturing. This discovery could… 

Mar 26, 2026 The News & Observer

Don’t touch this fluffy NC insect — it’s ‘painfully venomous.’ What to know

“They are one of the more venomous insects in the state and are painfully venomous,” Matt Bertone, director and entomologist at the Plant Disease and Insect Clinic at N.C. State University, told The N&O in a Wednesday, March 25 email. “But barring an allergic reaction, stings are not going to cause any serious issues.” 

Mar 26, 2026 Blue Ridge Public Radio

How to heal WNC rivers after Helene? Plant thousands of trees.

Mother Nature has been recovering from Helene’s impacts – and some people are helping the process along. Volunteers and paid workers with MountainTrue and North Carolina State University have been planting trees all winter to help prevent worse floods the next time the region experiences extreme weather. 

Mar 26, 2026 The New York Times

36 Hours in Raleigh

On the edge of the North Carolina State University campus, the Gregg Museum of Art & Design exhibits textiles and Native American decorative arts from its own collection alongside contemporary exhibitions from regional artists. 

Mar 25, 2026 ENG Technica

A Fourth Traffic Light Enters the Conversation

A long-standing standard in road systems, the three-color traffic light may soon face a significant upgrade as engineers explore adding a fourth signal: white. The proposal, highlighted in North Carolina State University research and discussed in Popular Mechanics, reflects the growing influence of autonomous vehicles on infrastructure design. Rather than replacing red, yellow, and green,… 

Mar 25, 2026 Forbes

The System That Decides What Science Gets Published Is Breaking Down

It is important to understand that peer review has been wobbling for decades. But Gross, a statistician at North Carolina State University, sees the recent past as qualitatively different. Trends in the last five to ten years, he told me, “have really brought things to a head” resulted in widespread frustration among editors. The mechanism… 

Mar 25, 2026 Digital Information World

Researchers Pioneer New Technique to Stop LLMs from Giving Users Unsafe Responses

“We don’t want LLMs to tell people to harm themselves or to give them information they can use to harm other people,” says Jung-Eun Kim, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor of computer science at North Carolina State University. At issue is a model’s safety alignment, or training protocols… 

Mar 25, 2026 News & Observer

NC’s pollen is going to get worse before it gets better. The yellow timeline

The Triangle will likely see a peak in that yellow pine pollen next week, potentially on March 30, before tapering off by early April, said Robert Bardon, associate dean for Extension in the North Carolina State University’s College of Natural Resources. Scientists and researchers created a formula that anticipates the peak pine pollen season through… 

Mar 24, 2026 Governing

Hawaii Has Warned For Years About Flooding Danger At Wahiawa Dam

Researchers at North Carolina State University analyzed the events surrounding the last 552 dam failures in the continental U.S. They found that the vast majority failed after moderate rainfall events that occurred one after the other over five to 30 days. The biggest contributing factor was the amount of water already in a reservoir at… 

Mar 24, 2026 Popular Mechanics

A Study Proves Stoplights Need a Fourth Color: White

As more self-driving cars enter roadways around the world, many aspects of driving could change forever. More electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous vehicles (AV) are already leading engineers to implement electric roadways and city planners to design dedicated lanes for AVs—and now, the humble traffic light is next for a makeover. For the dawning age… 

Mar 24, 2026 USA Today

NC farmers are facing a severe financial squeeze in 2026. Here’s why

“I think farmers are pretty down right now,” said Dr. Jeffrey Dorfman, an agricultural economist at N.C. State University. “It’s been a tough couple years, and I don’t think anyone is thinking it’s going to be better this year. I think they’re just hoping not to lose a lot of money.”