Using satellite imagery, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers comprehensively analyzed drought dynamics over five years to reveal short and long-term climate trends in Arkansas. The Delta, a regional powerhouse for Arkansas agriculture built by river flows, is showing a trend of increasing droughts.

Hamdi Zurqani, an assistant professor of geospatial science for the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Arkansas Forest Resources Center at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, developed the Arkansas Vegetation Drought Explorer v.2.0 as part of a drought mapping study. The user-friendly web app gives users access to maps showing drought levels in Arkansas by county, year and month.

A new comprehensive survey by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology has highlighted an urgent need to enable more farmers and contractors to revive England’s hedgerows to meet national restoration targets. While agri-environment schemes (AES) have improved the condition of these iconic landscape features, the overall length of hedgerows remains unchanged, says the report for Natural England.

Florida manatees are threatened by human activity, but they’re also doing better than ever, according to a study examining manatee populations since 12,000 BC, published November 20, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Thomas J. Pluckhahn of the University of South Florida and David K. Thulman of George Washington University, Washington DC, U.S.

One thing known to improve mental health among students is increased school connectedness—when students feel that the adults and peers in their school care about them as individuals in addition to their learning ability. Schools are working to improve their connectedness by adding social workers to their staff to help address the mental health concerns of students. However, according to new research from The University of Texas at Arlington and Virginia Commonwealth University, many individual schools and districts are struggling with the best way to deploy these valuable resources so that students can benefit from their care.

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) today announced that Professor Christian Wolfrum, an eminent biomedical scientist, will be joining the University as the next Deputy President and Provost. 

He succeeds Professor Ling San, who will step down from his role as Deputy President and Provost on 30 June 2025. Prof Wolfrum will be appointed Deputy President and Provost-Designate from 2 December 2024 and will take office as NTU Deputy President and Provost on 1 July 2025.

Prof Wolfrum joins NTU from ETH Zurich, the best university in continental Europe, where he is currently Vice President of Research. He is also a member of ETH Zurich’s Executive Board.