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Life Underground Suited Newly Discovered Dinosaur, Study Finds

In the News

Aug 29, 2024

Backflipping Springtails Are the Fastest Spinners Known in Nature

New Scientist
Adrian Smith at North Carolina State University sifted through leaf litter in his backyard to collect mottled orange and brown, round-bodied Dicyrtomina minuta. “I brought them in the lab and filmed them, and I was amazed at what they did,” says Smith.

Aug 29, 2024

This Tiny Bug Does the Fastest Backflip on Earth — And We Have the Footage to Prove It

BBC Science Focus
“When globular springtails jump, they don’t just leap up and down, they flip through the air – it’s the closest you can get to a Sonic the Hedgehog jump in real life,” said corresponding author Adrian Smith, head of the evolutionary biology and behaviour research lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “So naturally I wanted to see how they do it.”

Aug 29, 2024

Watch: ‘Incredible’ Bug Found in U.S. Backyards May Be Earth’s Best Gymnast

Newsweek
“What excites me most about this research is how extraordinary the movements of these creatures are; there’s nothing on Earth that does a backflip faster than a globular springtail,” Adrian Smith, research assistant professor of biology at North Carolina State University, told Newsweek.

Aug 19, 2024

Why Do Researchers Often Prefer Safe Over Risky Projects?

Research Information
A mathematical framework that builds on the economic theory of hidden-action models provides insight into how the unobservable nature of effort and risk shapes investigators’ research strategies and the incentive structures within which they work, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Kevin Gross from North Carolina State University, U.S., and Carl Bergstrom from the University of Washington, U.S.

Aug 15, 2024

Teams Forge Communication Shortcuts Across Large Organizations to Keep Information Flowing

ScienMag
A new study from North Carolina State University examines communication dynamics within a successful organization, uncovering the crucial role of position and discovering the prevalence of “shortcuts” across the hierarchy. “I study networks, and this project has two: an email communication network between employees within an organization and the organization’s hierarchical structure on those same employees,” says Nathaniel Josephs, assistant professor of statistics at NC State and corresponding author of the work.

Jul 23, 2024

Atlantic Hurricane Season Could Wake From Its Current Slumber by Early August

The Weather Channel
Incidentally, a bit of a late July lull has shown up in data since 1995, according to North Carolina State University Ph.D. candidate Cameron Masiello.

Jul 19, 2024

Why Is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Shrinking?

Futurity
For the study, Keaveney, who is part of Yale’s earth and planetary sciences department, and his coauthors, Gary Lackmann of North Carolina State University and Timothy Dowling of the University of Louisville, focused on the influence of smaller, transient storms on the Great Red Spot.

Jul 12, 2024

What Flavor Is That Neutrino? Adding Flavor Helps to Track Neutrino Movement in Astrophysical Systems

NC State physicists Gail McLaughlin and Evan Grohs carried out research to address the challenges of keeping track of both the physical movement of neutrinos and their change of flavor in astrophysical systems.

Jul 9, 2024

New Species of Dinosaur Unearthed by NC Paleontologists

WRAL
The newly-discovered ancestor of Thescelosaurus shows evidence that these animals spent at least part of their time in underground burrows.

Jul 9, 2024

Life Underground Suited Newly Discovered Dinosaur, Study Finds

Phys.org
The preservation of these fossils, along with some distinguishing features, alerted paleontologists to the possibility of burrowing.