Local Features

A scientist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences drove to Raleigh-Durham International Airport to pick up an unusual passenger in late April. Research Curator of Herpetology Dr. Bryan Stuart said it seemed that a live tree frog jumped into the suitcase of a traveler from Honduras and took an unplanned trip to North Carolina.

The rally on Saturday was hosted by Indivisible Carteret County and Indivisible Craven United, and at it people voiced their displeasure about cuts to Medicaid, proposed changes that would gut the U.S. Department of Education, and ICE raids and the crackdown on immigration.

Don Voyles compares what is happening now in the U.S. Government with that time in history. “It's really alarming to see the parallels,” he said. “I'm remembering Germany in the late 1930s.”

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope recently announced the discovery of gases on a faraway planet that may be the same as those produced by ocean plankton on Earth. But a North Carolina astrophysicist is cautioning people to take note that researchers stressed it’s not a discovery of actual living organisms and that the findings should be viewed cautiously until further observations have been completed.

Senator Bobby Hanig’s Senate Bill 20 would make the intentional release of balloons illegal, with a fine of $250 per balloon for violations.

“We're still losing 22 to 36 veterans (to suicide) every day and about half of those are veterans that are being treated by the Veterans Administration currently," Dr. Phil Kiver said, "“The experiences of combat don't go away, and sometimes they manifest themselves years or decades after your service.”

In this month’s Weird Science, PRE’s Annette Weston looks into the much-revered field of paleontology, made famous by Hollywood, but perhaps even less glamorous than you might think.

The artifacts and antiquities on display at an eastern North Carolina museum are virtually a treasure trove of the unusual, but it was something growing in the Cowan Museum of History and Science’s botanical garden that drew PRE’s Annette Weston to Kenansville for this month’s Weird Science.

A Duke graduate student led the research into whether ocean plastic trash -- which is routinely found in the guts of stranded whales – was confusing the whales into thinking the garbage was food.

It is the second oldest federal marine laboratory in the U.S., after Woods Hole.