Award-winning Central Falls High School biology teacher David Upegui, Ph.D., teamed up with URI paleontologist David Fastovsky to write a book aimed at helping teachers incorporate social justice into the biology curriculum.
A new study led by URI scientists Kathleen Melanson and Theodore Walls aims to shed light on real-world eating behaviors, using AI-enabled wearable technology. In collaboration with researchers at the University of Texas and funded by the National Institutes of Health, the team will develop a system to detect detailed information on eating motions.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Feb. 26, 2024 – In the 1980s, as a poetry student in Italy, Peter Covino was introduced to the work of acclaimed Italian poet Dario Bellezza. It’s a moment he still remembers.“It was a big deal to learn at that time that there was this really wild, irreverent writer exploring ideas that I didn’t realize would speak to me so directly,” says Covino, associate professor of English at the University of Rhode Island.
The program, organized by URI College of Nursing Professor Chris McGrane, provides respite care for parents of children with special needs, at no cost to them. For four hours every Saturday afternoon, McGrane and her team of URI students, take care of children with special needs, giving parents a chance to take a break from the sometimes daunting responsibilities of care.
Evidence to support the assumption that ultra-processed foods are all bad for one’s health is limited, and the nutritional quality of processed foods has not been considered by official U.S. Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines. University of Rhode Island Nutrition Professor Kathleen Melanson aims to help inform the newest guidelines, due out in 2025, as she begins a nutritional study funded by a $300,000 grant from the USDA.
Joëlle Rollo-Koster, a history professor at the University of Rhode Island and a renowned medieval scholar, has been elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, one of the highest honors that can be bestowed on a medievalist.
A trip to the deep floor of the ocean is somewhat akin to going to the moon. Like the landers on the moon, a benthic lander can make it happen, just a little closer to home.At the University of Rhode Island, a fleet of these observational systems is now taking shape, all being built at the University’s Narragansett Bay Campus, in preparation for their journey nearly two miles deep.
Though much has been written in the past decade about “involuntary celibates,” the rise of violent extremism, and their connection to mass violence, empirical research on this community is surprisingly scarce. A new examination authored by URI Professor Miriam Lindner aims to fill this gap.
Following the signing of the California Food Safety Act, which bans the use of four common food additives linked to health problems, URI Professor of Nutrition Kathleen Melanson lends her expertise to help explain what these ingredients are, what consumers should be aware of, as well as some simple tips to help avoid them.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Nov. 6, 2023 – Sara Sweetman, associate professor of education at the University of Rhode Island, and the creators of the Emmy-nominated PBS Kids show “Elinor Wonders Why” are enlisting Elinor, a curious little bunny, and her friends Ari and Olive to help break down barriers that girls face in the STEM fields.
A first-of-its kind-study by researchers at the University of Rhode Island, the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Padua examines the association between number of children and several key health indicators among older adults across multiple global regions.
The opioid epidemic has continued unabated since its start in the 1990s. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 280,000 people in the U.S, died from overdoses involving prescription opioids from 1999 to 2021.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 4, 2023 – Growing up in Portland, Oregon, in a Quaker family, Joy Ellison got their first taste of protest rallies when they were 6 years old.Ellison, who joined the University of Rhode Island last fall as an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, has been involved in social movements ever since.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 4, 2023 – The University of Rhode Island Metcalf Institute today announced the appointment of Fara Warner, a veteran journalist with a deep background in climate communication and editorial leadership, as its new executive director. The Metcalf Institute, which is celebrating its 25th year of training, is a global leader in providing professional development for science journalists, scientists and science communicators to expand and elevate public discussion around environmental issues.
A team from the University of Rhode Island, working alongside the Massachusetts Disabled Persons Protection Commission and consultants with intellectual and developmental disabilities, has developed an app that teaches adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities how to recognize abuse and report it to authorities.
With hurricane season just starting, Rhode Island has a new storm modeling system that will provide state and local emergency management officials with up-to-the-second information on wind strength and flooding to allow them to make real-time decisions.
The University of Rhode Island has formalized a research and education partnership with Australia’s Flinders University that advances AUKUS, a security partnership signed by the governments of the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. URI’s agreement with Flinders will bolster Australia’s efforts to produce the skilled workforce it needs to deliver on the AUKUS security pact, which includes a phased approach to build Australia’s undersea capability through the acquisition of conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines.
Land conservation projects do more than preserve open space and natural ecosystems. They can also boost property values for homeowners living nearby. But a new study finds that those financial benefits are unequally distributed among demographic groups in the U.S.The study, by researchers from the University of Rhode Island and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, found that new housing wealth associated with land conservation goes disproportionately to people who are wealthy and white.
KINGSTON, R.I. – April 25, 2023 – A recent investigative report by the nonprofit media outlet ProPublica revealing that for more than two decades U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas accepted gifts in the form of lavish trips from conservative Dallas businessman Harlan Crow has renewed concern over potential conflicts of interest and ethical lapses on the nation’s highest court.
By 2030, more than 30% of family businesses in the U.S. will lose their aging leaders to retirement, or death. Many of those leaders don’t have a strategy for letting go of their business, turning it over to a successor, or selling it. While it is rare for an incumbent leader to die while in office, it is difficult for them to face their mortality.
Access to safe water, proper sanitation and hygiene are essential for human survival. As the United Nations convenes its first major conference on water quality since 1977, researchers at the University of Rhode Island are seeking better ways to provide potable water and stop pollution from contaminating water supplies.
With the issue of child labor in the U.S. – particularly among migrant children – coming under new scrutiny, URI Professor of Political Science Brendan Skip Mark lends his expertise to provide context around the issue. Prof. Mark is co-director of the CIRIGHTS data project – the world’s largest quantitative dataset on global human rights.
If you’re a fan of HBO’s post-apocalyptic series “The Last of Us” – or the video game that inspired it – you’ve probably heard the term Cordyceps. In the show, the parasitic fungus has mutated, graduating from infecting insects to humans – transforming them into mind-controlled zombies. But it’s not all science fiction. Niels-Viggo Hobbs Ph.D. ’16, a University of Rhode Island assistant teaching professor in biological sciences, lends his expertise to carefully walk us through the world of Cordyceps.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Jan. 31, 2023 – The horrific death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis, Tennessee, police officers has again spurred calls for reform in police training. One tool in that training should be media literacy, says Renee Hobbs, professor of communication studies in the University of Rhode Island’s Harrington School of Communication and Media and an internationally-recognized authority on media literacy education.
A new study finds that proximity to electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) can raise property values depending on where homes are situated. The study, conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Rhode Island, the University of Maryland College Park, Princeton University and Cardiff University, was recently published in Nature Sustainability.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Jan. 31, 2023 – China’s National Bureau of Statistics recently released data showing the country’s first population decline in decades. At the end of 2022, the population of mainland China stood at 1.411 billion people, down 850,000 from the previous year.Around the world, experts called it a tipping point for a nation looking to continue an era of rapid economic expansion and boost its falling birth rate.
On a Fulbright research trip to Ukraine in 2014, Nicolai Petro had a front row seat to the eruption of the Maidan revolution, which led to the ouster of the country’s president who sought closer ties to Russia. The revolution also exposed the deep domestic conflict over Ukraine’s national identity between those in the country’s east who honor their Russian heritage and welcome ties to their neighbor and those in the western region who reject everything Russian.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Oct. 25, 2022 – As a deep political polarization has divided the nation, communities, and even families, a new project led by a University of Rhode Island professor aims to help people tune out divisive rhetoric and spot misleading media messages.The project, led by URI Communication Studies Professor Renee Hobbs, aims to engage faith leaders, K-12 teachers, law enforcement officials, public health workers, military veterans, high school students, and others in constructive dialogue, active listening, and creative media production.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Sept. 30, 2022 – If you’re a hiker or just love the outdoors, fall is probably your favorite season. Temperatures are cooler but still warm enough, days are still long, and for the most part, bugs are less of a pest.But as you get ready to head out, University of Rhode Island entomologist Tom Mather wants you to know something: This is also the season for adult blacklegged ticks, or deer ticks.
KINGSTON, R.I. – September 15, 2022 – A recent decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make hearing aids available over-the-counter is expanding access to assistance for millions of adults across the country who may have trouble hearing. The new rule was issued by the FDA in mid-August and will take effect mid-October.
A new study released in the European Journal of Ageing found that having a partner had a greater impact than having children in helping to stave off loneliness among older adults during the pandemic’s first wave. Researchers at the University of Rhode Island, University of Florence, University of Maryland Baltimore County and the SGH Warsaw School of Economics analyzed data on more than 35,000 adults aged 50 and older from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to examine if unpartnered and childless older adults reported more loneliness and how that changed over the course of the pandemic.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Aug. 10, 2022 – Over the next three years, three University of Rhode Island researchers are hoping to broaden the scientific understanding of methane emission dynamics in ultramafic rock systems – work that one day may help answer the mystery of the existence of past or present microbial life on Mars.Dawn Cardace and Soni Pradhanang, associate professors of geosciences, and Serena Moseman-Valtierra, an associate professor of biological sciences, have been awarded a $735,000 grant by the NASA Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research to study methane gas emissions at a site in northern California that has a rock system comparable to known sites on Mars.
KINGSTON, R.I. – August 1, 2022 – For backyard gardeners, mild droughts and water ban restrictions common during the summer months can be a cause for concern. Kate Venturini Hardesty, a program administrator and educator with the University of Rhode Island’s Cooperative Extension, offers some tips for backyard gardeners who are feeling the heat.
URI doctoral student Cali Antolini receives six month fellowship at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago to research photochemical and photocatalytic reactions and photovoltaic material performance.
A URI-led expedition to the Puerto Rico Trench took what researchers believe to be the deepest water core samples ever taken in the Atlantic. They’re also the deepest water cores taken anywhere in the oceans since 1962.
Ocean explorer and professor of oceanography Robert Ballard will deliver the keynote address for the University of Rhode Island’s 136th Undergraduate Commencement. WaterFire founder and executive artistic director Barnaby M. Evans will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
KINGSTON, RI – April 11, 2022 – Albert Kausch, director of the Plant Biotechnology Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island, is welcoming 11 scientists from across the nation and Argentina to a 10-day National Science Foundation and Department of Energy sponsored workshop.The Cereal Crop Plant Transformation and Genome Editing Training Workshop, to be held at Kausch’s lab in West Kingston this week, will train participants to alter the DNA of sorghum to improve it as a bioenergy crop.
KINGSTON, R.I. — April 7, 2022 — Following heart-healthy nutritional guidance often proves to be a difficult commitment. But the American Heart Association is making it simpler to follow in its new guidelines, and a University of Rhode Island professor is helping.
On April 6, URI will host Yale Professor Becca R. Levy as presenter of the 2022 Thewlis Lecture on Gerontology and Geriatrics. “Ageism and You: Why It Matters” will cover the impact of ageism on health and longevity. Levy is a public health expert and leading expert on the psychology of successful aging.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Feb. 7, 2022 – Thirteen University of Rhode Island mechanical engineering students are working with NASA and other prestigious universities on a project that could cut in half the travel time for a human mission to Mars. The project involves nuclear thermal propulsion, which scientists and engineers say can get astronauts to Mars more quickly and safely than they can with current chemical propulsion and technology.
A wildlife biologist at the University of Rhode Island has observed a significant growth in the local population of white-footed mice this year, which could increase Lyme disease risk next year while also providing additional food to area predators and increasing the likelihood that homeowners find mice in their basements.
Miller found the bird – a species never previously observed in the Ocean State – during an all-day event he organized in which dozens of local birders sought rare birds along the Rhode Island coast.
KINGSTON, R.I. – Nov. 1, 2021 – This holiday season, consumers will again face product shortages and shipping delays as they try to stock their cupboards for Thanksgiving and fill their closets with holiday gifts, say three supply chain management professors in the University of Rhode Island’s College of Business.While this is the second holiday season since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports of empty store shelves may be even worse than last year.
A new University of Rhode Island web platform, “Plastics: Land to Sea,” has been launched as part of an ongoing collaborative initiative to provide the science community with a burgeoning array of data resources and tools designed to inform and support dialogue concerning research focused efforts to start addressing plastics pollution.
University of California, Berkeley Professor Umesh Vazirani, a pioneer in quantum computing algorithms and complexity theory, will deliver the annual University of Rhode Island Cruickshank Lecture on Monday, Oct. 18, in conjunction with the three-day Frontiers in Quantum Computing conference.
Researchers at the University of Rhode Island and Penn State University have been awarded a four-year, $1.5 million grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study the effects of sea level rise and how it may exacerbate the impact of extreme weather.
The University of Rhode Island will host more than a dozen international experts in the growing field of quantum information science in October for the inaugural Frontiers in Quantum Computing conference in celebration of the launch of URI’s new master’s degree program in quantum computing.