Motorcycle crashes have been increasing in North Carolina – in 2010, there were 4,240 crashes involving motorcyclists in North Carolina, up from 2,541 crashes in 2001. Although crashes have increased, the proportion of riders who die when they crash has remained the same, largely because virtually all riders in North Carolina wear helmets. Researchers Rob Foss, Bevan Kirley and Arthur Goodwin collaborate on motorcycle research at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC) and answered our top questions.

The Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) honored Dr. Mary Ruth Coleman for her contributions to the field of gifted and special education with a Showcase Session at its annual convention in San Antonio, TX. Coleman, who was CEC president in 2007, is a Senior Scientist Emerita at FPG.

Four graduate students at the Institute for Marine Sciences have won Best Student Film at the Beneath the Waves Film Festival.

According to a statewide survey of North Carolina residents, a large majority of current motorcyclists support the state's requirement that all motorcycle riders wear safety helmets. Among survey respondents who had ridden a motorcycle during the past year, 78 percent support the requirement. Support was even greater among non-motorcyclists, with 93 percent favoring the requirement.

A new report by the UNC Center for Community Capital and Institute for Market Transformation shows the risk of mortgage default is one-third lower for energy-efficient, ENERGY STAR-rated homes – a factor lenders and Congress should consider when making mortgage loans and policy.

North Carolina’s Office of the Governor has awarded The Old North State Award to Dr. James J. Gallagher, senior scientist emeritus at UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. Former State Senator Howard Lee presented the award on March 1.

Weight management programs that focus on behavior change can be effective in leading to weight loss, but most are done in controlled settings. As a result, it is often difficult to know whether the intervention can be sustained outside of the test environment. Now researchers at the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention have successfully implemented a previously proven weight-loss program in the “real-world” through select North Carolina health departments and have published their findings online February 14 in the journal Obesity.

In what would be the boldest policy initiative designed to further the education of young children since the Head Start program in 1965, President Obama used his State of the Union address to issue a call for universal access to statewide pre-kindergarten programs. The President cited findings from a well-established base of research that includes a long-running study at UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG), and he also praised Georgia’s universal pre-kindergarten program, which a team from FPG recently evaluated.

Young people who once reported thinking they had a 50 percent or less chance of surviving to age 35 are more likely to engage in risky behavior later in life than their more hopeful peers, according to a new study from researchers at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The American Sociological Assocation has awarded S. Philip Morgan, director of UNC's Carolina Population Center, the 2012 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography. The award honors the author of a recent book that has made significant contributions to social demography, such as Morgan’s 2011 Understanding Family Change and Variation: Toward a Theory of Conjunctural Action.

Whole genome sequencing—examining in detail all of an individual's DNA—has the potential to help researchers and clinicians diagnose genetically caused diseases, pinpoint people at high risk for diseases before they show symptoms, and guide new disease treatments. RENCI is helping to make it happen.

UNC's RENCI will work with Utah State University and water scientists across the U.S. on a $4.5 million collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation aimed at giving hydrologists the technology infrastructure they need to address critical issues related to water quality, quantity, accessibility, and management.

Joseph DeSimone is a chemist, an inventor, and a man with vision into the future. He holds more than 115 patents. In this interview, he talks about his work, about what it’s like to invent things, and about the role of science in this century. DeSimone is director of UNC's Institute for Advanced Materials.

John Bruno, a researcher in UNC's Institute of Marine Sciences, weighs in on the bleak New York Times op-ed piece, "A World Without Coral Reefs."

The director of UNC's Center for Galapagos Studies talks with NPR about what Carolina researchers are doing to save rare species from extinction.