University of Florida News

BELLE GLADE—For the spooks that haunt the Everglades Agricultural Area, Halloween happens every night as they swoop through the skies above the sprawling sugar cane fields in search of treats.

GAINESVILLE—University of Florida researchers say yellow jacket season is at its peak and warn parents to be particularly careful about keeping children away from the territorial insects’ nests.

GAINESVILLE — Consumer confidence in Florida dropped four points in October, driven by a nosedive in the stock market and concern over an impending hike in interest rates, University of Florida economists report.

GAINESVILLE — High school students struggling with reading can improve their skills significantly over short periods of time by becoming tutors to younger students, a University of Florida study has found.

GAINESVILLE — Like a lot of researchers at the University of Florida, Chris Beach spent months in the lab on a project, then published the results in a academic journal.

GAINESVILLE—A forceful blow to the head can trigger a “Pacmanlike” enzyme to begin gobbling up important structural proteins in the brain for up to one month afterward — weeks longer than previously suspected, according to a University of Florida Brain Institute researcher.

GAINESVILLE — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings did more for literature than win the Pulitzer Prize. According to a new book published by University Press of Florida, she cheered up an ailing F. Scott Fitzgerald, encouraged Thomas Wolfe to be less wordy and went fishing with Ernest Hemingway.

GAINESVILLE — In a new hypothesis for a behavior observed in a number of species, two researchers say the process of natural selection may explain homosexual behavior in a beetle that preys on citrus in South Florida.

GAINESVILLE — When University of Florida researchers first looked into Florida west coast residents’ complaints of dying palms, they thought the cause was a disease.

GAINESVILLE—Take a walk and call me in the morning may be a good prescription for stress, according to researchers at the University of Florida.