UCF in the News

The signs of hip-hop’s influence are everywhere — from Pharrell Williams becoming Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director to billion-dollar brands like Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones and retail mainstays like Diddy’s Sean John and Jay-Z’s Rocawear. It didn’t start out that way. The music genre germinated 50 years ago as an escape from the poverty and violence of New York City’s most distressed borough, the Bronx, where few wanted to invest in its businesses or its people. “Hip-hop goes beyond the music,” said C. Keith Harrison, a professor and founding director for the University of Central Florida’s Business of Hip-Hop Innovation & Creative Industries certificate program. “Hip-hop always knew, as Nipsey Hussle would say, how to get it out of the trunk, and so they’ve always had to have innovative business models.”

Mars, as we know it, is a frigid and lifeless world—but a new study reveals a fresh hint to a much more happening past. NASA’s Curiosity rover has found an array of medallion-sized, hexagonal mud cracks on the terrains of Mars’ Gale Crater. The distinctive shape of these patterns suggests the Red Planet was once much balmier and that it cycled through wet and dry episodes for millions of years, per the study published last week in Nature. These conditions are theorized to lead to the emergence of life. “Early Martian geology was not the result of a sudden transient warming event,” Ramses Ramirez, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida who was not involved in the study, says to Science.

The four astronauts heading to the moon have met the spacecraft that will get them there. The three NASA astronauts and one Canadian are set to launch to the moon on a flyby mission at the end of next year, part of NASA's new moon program called Artemis. From member station WMFE, Brendan Byrne reports the Artemis program represents a turning point in both where NASA is heading and how it's getting there. The lunar lander, set to fly with the Artemis III mission, will be built on a very different model. NASA won't own that lander. Instead, the agency is asking a commercial partner for a ride to the surface. It's like calling a lunar Uber instead of buying your own moon buggy. The paradigm shift started with the George W. Bush administration as it planned for the future of NASA after the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, which took astronauts to space for three decades, says University of Central Florida history professor Amy Foster.

UCF senior tackle Lokahi Pauole may be thousands of miles from his home in Hawaii, but the deadly wildfires that have ravaged part of his state haven’t been far from his mind. “My initial thoughts when I first saw the whole thing going on, it’s just a really sad day for the Hawaiian Islands and a sad day for the country,” Pauole said following the Knights’ second scrimmage Saturday. The wildfires on Hawaii’s Maui island have killed at least 80 people and forced thousands of residents and tourists to evacuate. The disaster claimed the historic resort city of Lahaina. The Big Island of Hawaii has also been impacted by wildfires as well.“In Hawaii, we’re all a family. Ohana is a real thing and even though I’m from O’ahu and I don’t have any immediate family there in Maui, you’re connected somehow,” said Pauole. “Prayers out to them. I’m praying for them every day, reaching out to who I can reach out to.”

The signs of hip-hop´s influence are everywhere - from Pharrell Williams becoming Louis Vuitton´s men´s creative director to billion-dollar brands like Dr. Dre´s Beats headphones and retail mainstays like Diddy´s Sean John and Jay-Z's Rocawear. It didn't start out that way. The music genre germinated 50 years ago as an escape from the poverty and violence of New York City´s most distressed borough, the Bronx, where few wanted to invest in its businesses or its people. "Hip-hop goes beyond the music," said C. Keith Harrison, a professor and founding director for the University of Central Florida´s Business of Hip-Hop Innovation & Creative Industries certificate program. "Hip-hop always knew, as Nipsey Hussle would say, how to get it out of the trunk, and so they´ve always had to have innovative business models."

It takes millions - if not, billions - of dollars to take a drug from the lab to the pharmacy. Last year, out of thousands of drugs in clinical trials, the FDA approved only 37, the fewest to pass regulatory scrutiny since 2016. Now, artificial intelligence could soon help figure out which drugs will work and which ones will not. "We can cut down the experiments as well as cut down the time," said Dr. Sudipta Seal, a professor in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Central Florida. On average, it takes 10 years to develop a new drug. Now, computer scientists are aiming to speed up that process using an AI-based drug screening method that does the intensely difficult job of matching drug and protein interactions.

The success of the commercial space industry has brought in massive benefits for Florida's Brevard County, with billions of dollars in economic impact being directly linked to the industry. Since the retirement of NASA's space shuttle program, there have been more licensed launches in Florida than ever, at 50 in 2022 and 36 in 2023 as of Aug. 2. Below is a graph mapping every licensed launch since 1989. The University of Central Florida contributes to the space industry by supplying these educated employees to aerospace companies. According to Aviation Week Network, the Orlando university has been the no. 1 supplier of graduates to the aerospace and defense industries for six years in a row. UCF reports that 27% of Lockheed Martin employees and 29% of Kennedy Space Center employees are UCF alumni.

The summer heat can become a bigger headache when we’re suddenly stuck on the road with car trouble. Batteries die. Tires wear out, blow out, go flat. And drivers, in a haste, lock themselves out of cars. Roadside helpers and mechanics see a rise in such car woes as temperatures climb each summer — and this scorching summer has been no exception, with July marking one of the most persistent extreme heat waves in recent years. To avoid getting into a rolling furnace, Houck recommends covering the interior with a windshield reflector, a towel on the steering wheel and even a glove on the gear shift. Little things like windshield shades are proven to reduce the cabin temperature by an average of 15 degrees, according to a University of Central Florida study. “I don’t think there’s one secret to keeping your car cool,” Houck said. “Just be aware of the risks and don’t park your dog or kids in it.”

From lasers to self-driving cars, video game displays, and medical imaging, high school students are spending the week at UCF’s College of Optics and Photonics getting hands-on experience in the field. It’s all part of their Laser and Photonics Summer Camp. Dean of the college David Hagan said optics and photonics are just about everywhere you look. “If people are watching TV, they’re looking at a photonic device, a display, when you’re doing an internet search, that’s all going over the fiberoptic network and we have a very strong program here in fiberoptics,” he said.