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Teams Forge Communication Shortcuts Across Large Organizations to Keep Information Flowing

tornado

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.
The globular springtail

Aug 29, 2024

This Tiny Backyard Bug Does the Fastest Backflips on Earth

The globular springtail can leap 60 times its body length and spin at a rate of 368 rotations per second.
Several blue and yellow tentacles wave from a blue and yellow stem against a black backdrop

Aug 28, 2024

The Scope of Our Research: Winners of the 2024 Envisioning Research Contest

Four Sciences students were recognized in the 2024 Envisioning Research contest.
Carolyn Mattingly

Aug 27, 2024

The Community Builder

Under the leadership of Carolyn Mattingly, one of NC State’s largest academic departments became more unified.
An artistic rendering of a pair of dinosaurs walking through a cave toward a swamp.

Aug 27, 2024

Discovering Dinosaurs

Paleontologists from NC State and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences helped unearth a new dinosaur species.

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.

Chemistry professor Joshua Pierce writes on a whiteboard while talking to a student

Aug 15, 2024

From the Lab to the Market: Commercializing Chemistry Research

With the help of NC State’s Office of Research Commercialization, College of Sciences faculty are ushering their innovations into the marketplace.

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.