University of Florida team mobilizes immune system against tumors — By Michelle Koidin Jaffee Elias Sayour spent years working toward becoming a pediatric oncologist so he could help kids fight cancer. He always imagined taking care of patients; he didn’t think research was really his thing. But as a fellow in training, Sayour was struck — overwhelmed, really — by…

UF scifi scholar encourages climate change conversations — Climate change conversations seem to come with invisible boundaries: humanists talking with humanists, scientists talking with scientists. In some conversations, climate change can be just as taboo as religion, sex and politics. But how do you tackle a problem you can’t talk about? University of Florida science fiction scholar Terry…

UF Program for Resource Efficient Communities director talks low carbon — In fall 2008, a homeowner in Pasco County was jailed for breaking the rules in his deed-restricted subdivision. His lawn was brown. A few months later, spring 2009, Tampa Bay Water drained its 15-billion-gallon reservoir and crossed its fingers for an early rainy season. This irony — jailing someone for…

UF associate professor uses app to talk climate change with farmers — Clyde Fraisse is eager to talk to farmers about climate change. Farmers? Not so much. “They are very focused on this season,” says Fraisse, an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida and director of the Southeast Climate Extension project. …

A warmer world sets sea level rise in motion for Florida — Sea level has risen about 8 inches in the last century, and heat records have been broken, only to be broken again, and again. In human time, this is new, but the Earth has been here before, bathed in a warming atmosphere, and has left clues for scientists like University…

UF researcher discusses energy issues — By Cindy Spence Wendell Porter’s daughter, Erica, now 27, remembers a childhood where some infractions carried more weight than others. “I left a light on once,” Erica says. A high crime in the Porter household, with a long lecture attached, Dad armed with data. Today, when she opens her utility…

UF researcher uses laser scanning to document coastal communities heritage — By Cindy Spence Since 1859, the Island Hotel has weathered the storms of coastal Cedar Key. Generations have sipped a beer on a hot summer day and dined on speckled trout fresh off the boat. Its weathered facade seems steadfast, a survivor of the Gulf of Mexico’s whims. The thriving…

UF researchers say common sense may be our best defense against certain diseases — By Cindy Spence A warming world is turning some exotic names — Zika, chikungunya, vibrio, ciguatera — into household words. But before we sound alarms, University of Florida researchers have some advice: Common sense may be our best defense. Scientists at UF’s Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory (FMEL) in Vero Beach…

Florida Climate Institute co-directors discuss the importance of science — By Jim Jones and Ellen Martin, Co-Directors of the Florida Climate Institute Many of the qualities that make Florida an attractive place to live also make it particularly vulnerable to climate change. …