UCF in the News

Even from afar, Tropical Storm Idalia puts Brevard County's beaches and sea turtles at risk, as it rides our way right when something that happens once in a blue moon and not again this century: a blue "supermoon."Idalia will hit Florida as the moon is at its closest to Florida, making high tide higher and therefore storm surge in the storm's path that much more severe. The storm could cause chaos for hatching sea turtles, though. If the conditions are right this week, with onshore winds, then heavy surf will push hatchling sea turtles back onto the beach, risking their already endangered lives, "especially now, during the hatching season and after this kind of storm when the winds shift back onshore," Kate Mansfield, a biology professor at University of Central Florida, said via email. "It looks like the predicted winds will be onshore by weekend." Loggerhead sea turtle nesting is slowing down, Mansfield said, and should wrap up soon. Leatherback turtle nesting ended in June, she added, and green sea turtle nesting is still ongoing through September. "I think (hope) we are past the green turtle peak," she said. "It's been a doozy this year. We are breaking the green turtle nest record daily at this point (and have been for over a month)."

Today, India’s Chandrayaan-3 became the first spacecraft to successfully land near the lunar south pole, and India became the fourth country to make a soft landing anywhere on lunar soil, following the former Soviet Union, the United States, and China. The robotic vehicle touched down at 8:33 Eastern time, nearly six weeks after its launch. Getting a craft safely to the moon, and especially to the rough terrain of the south pole, poses many challenges. “You know the saying, ‘Space is hard.’ It’s because the environment we’re trying to operate in is not the environment where most of our technology has matured,” says Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida who studies space economics. To name just a few of the technical factors that have to go absolutely right, the vehicle has to survive the jolt of launch, the vacuum of space, and the challenges of heat transfer and space radiation—plus communicate with Earth, despite a significant time delay. “All these things add up,” he says.

The signs of hip-hop’s influence are everywhere — from Pharrell Williams becoming Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director to billion-dollar brands like Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones and retail mainstays like Diddy’s Sean John and Jay-Z’s Rocawear. It didn’t start out that way. The music genre germinated 50 years ago as an escape from the poverty and violence of New York City’s most distressed borough, the Bronx, where few wanted to invest in its businesses or its people. “Hip-hop goes beyond the music,” said C. Keith Harrison, a professor and founding director for the University of Central Florida’s Business of Hip-Hop Innovation & Creative Industries certificate program. “Hip-hop always knew, as Nipsey Hussle would say, how to get it out of the trunk, and so they’ve always had to have innovative business models.”

Mars, as we know it, is a frigid and lifeless world—but a new study reveals a fresh hint to a much more happening past. NASA’s Curiosity rover has found an array of medallion-sized, hexagonal mud cracks on the terrains of Mars’ Gale Crater. The distinctive shape of these patterns suggests the Red Planet was once much balmier and that it cycled through wet and dry episodes for millions of years, per the study published last week in Nature. These conditions are theorized to lead to the emergence of life. “Early Martian geology was not the result of a sudden transient warming event,” Ramses Ramirez, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida who was not involved in the study, says to Science.

The four astronauts heading to the moon have met the spacecraft that will get them there. The three NASA astronauts and one Canadian are set to launch to the moon on a flyby mission at the end of next year, part of NASA's new moon program called Artemis. From member station WMFE, Brendan Byrne reports the Artemis program represents a turning point in both where NASA is heading and how it's getting there. The lunar lander, set to fly with the Artemis III mission, will be built on a very different model. NASA won't own that lander. Instead, the agency is asking a commercial partner for a ride to the surface. It's like calling a lunar Uber instead of buying your own moon buggy. The paradigm shift started with the George W. Bush administration as it planned for the future of NASA after the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, which took astronauts to space for three decades, says University of Central Florida history professor Amy Foster.

UCF senior tackle Lokahi Pauole may be thousands of miles from his home in Hawaii, but the deadly wildfires that have ravaged part of his state haven’t been far from his mind. “My initial thoughts when I first saw the whole thing going on, it’s just a really sad day for the Hawaiian Islands and a sad day for the country,” Pauole said following the Knights’ second scrimmage Saturday. The wildfires on Hawaii’s Maui island have killed at least 80 people and forced thousands of residents and tourists to evacuate. The disaster claimed the historic resort city of Lahaina. The Big Island of Hawaii has also been impacted by wildfires as well.“In Hawaii, we’re all a family. Ohana is a real thing and even though I’m from O’ahu and I don’t have any immediate family there in Maui, you’re connected somehow,” said Pauole. “Prayers out to them. I’m praying for them every day, reaching out to who I can reach out to.”

The signs of hip-hop´s influence are everywhere - from Pharrell Williams becoming Louis Vuitton´s men´s creative director to billion-dollar brands like Dr. Dre´s Beats headphones and retail mainstays like Diddy´s Sean John and Jay-Z's Rocawear. It didn't start out that way. The music genre germinated 50 years ago as an escape from the poverty and violence of New York City´s most distressed borough, the Bronx, where few wanted to invest in its businesses or its people. "Hip-hop goes beyond the music," said C. Keith Harrison, a professor and founding director for the University of Central Florida´s Business of Hip-Hop Innovation & Creative Industries certificate program. "Hip-hop always knew, as Nipsey Hussle would say, how to get it out of the trunk, and so they´ve always had to have innovative business models."

It takes millions - if not, billions - of dollars to take a drug from the lab to the pharmacy. Last year, out of thousands of drugs in clinical trials, the FDA approved only 37, the fewest to pass regulatory scrutiny since 2016. Now, artificial intelligence could soon help figure out which drugs will work and which ones will not. "We can cut down the experiments as well as cut down the time," said Dr. Sudipta Seal, a professor in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Central Florida. On average, it takes 10 years to develop a new drug. Now, computer scientists are aiming to speed up that process using an AI-based drug screening method that does the intensely difficult job of matching drug and protein interactions.