— UCF receives $1.8 million for new program to encourage students to study math, science: “The UCF program aims to recruit students partly by offering some freshmen a course that will introduce them to a variety of STEM-related careers. Students who take the class, which will be offered for free to those who have been invited to enroll, will earn three credits for it.”
— Huge eyeball from unknown creature washes ashore on Florida beach: “Taking his usual morning stroll along the surf in Pompano Beach, Gino Covacci noticed a strange ball-like object at the high tide line. He kicked it over and found himself staring at the biggest eyeball he had ever seen.”
— Orange biology teacher wins president’s award for environmental educators: “Deborah Wasylik, a longtime biology teacher at Dr. Phillips High School, has been chosen as one of 18 top national environmental educators by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.”
— An unusual collaboration between researchers in two disparate fields at the University of Florida resulted in a new discovery about the teeth of 65-million-year-old dinosaurs: “Just a decade ago, a paleontologist might not have asked engineers for help, and they could not have helped him. In the last 10 years, however, Sawyer said advances in engineering — tribology and nanoscience, in particular — make it possible to test more materials, even those millions of years old.”
