Latest Chapel Hill Stories

CHAPEL HILL -- In the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina, scientists and research centers from across the country came together to generate information on the contaminated floodwaters and offer it to hazardous materials experts and public health officials.In a matter of hours, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Marine Sciences Program and Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), together with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), played a key role in that...

CHAPEL HILL -- In the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- probably the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history -- a leading ecologist says that one of the best things that could happen to New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana and Mississippi would be more rain."People might think I'm kidding, but I'm not," said Dr. Seth R. Reice, associate professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's College of Arts and Sciences."The floodwater still covering...

CHAPEL HILL "“ Fears that chemical byproducts resulting from purifying drinking water with chlorine boost the chances that pregnant women will miscarry were not supported by the results of a major new study. If such threats exist at all, which is uncertain, they likely are modest, it concludes.The national study, directed by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists, contrasts with earlier, less detailed work done in Northern California and published in 1998. That research...

CHAPEL HILL - Local health department directors across North Carolina are confused about state laws covering whether their facilities can be made smoke-free, but still strongly support such policies, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.The UNC schools of medicine and public health research showed that a majority of the directors were unsure or did not think they could enact tobacco-free policies on health department grounds.In response to the confusion, North...

CHAPEL HILL - Experimenting with Arabidopsis, a fast-growing cousin of the humble mustard plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a big surprise while investigating how plants respond to attacks from disease organisms such as bacteria and viruses."Contrary to what we thought we'd find, our experiments showed that at least three different proteins work in concert with one another in tug-of war or teeter totter-fashion to keep plant defenses in a state of...

CHAPEL HILL "“ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chemists have developed what they believe is a breakthrough method of creating the world's tiniest manufactured particles for delivering drugs and other organic materials into the human body.Adapting technology pioneered by the electronics industry in fabricating transistors, the team has figured out for the first time how to create particles for carrying genetic material, pharmaceuticals and other compounds of unprecedented small...

CHAPEL HILL - The ages at which workers are exposed to low doses of ionizing radiation apparently make a difference in whether they will develop cancer, according to a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.UNC scientists investigated deaths among workers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site in Richland, Wash. The Hanford Site produced plutonium for atomic weapons, including the first plutonium bombs dropped during World War II.Researchers say the largest cancer risk...

Naltrexone reduces heavy drinking days by average of 16 days a monthHealthDay News -- A monthly injection could help problem drinkers cut back or stop drinking alcohol altogether.That's the conclusion of a study published in the April 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that found alcoholics given a monthly shot of naltrexone were able to reduce their heavy-drinking days from an average of 19 days per month to three days per month."Alcoholism is a very common...