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Throughout the month of June Koreshan State Park in Estero is hosting four 'Citizen Science' informational programs to introduce people to the concept of citizen science and learn about four established research projects that they can become involved with. Citizen Science harnesses the interest and involvement of members of the public to help collect and interpret results for specifically focused scientific questions.

The United States has become increasingly polarized in recent years. New research published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace seeks to better understand what happens when democracies become ‘perniciously polarized’ — that’s when polarization has divided a society into two mutually antagonistic political camps, where each side sees the other as a threat to the country’s future. According to this research, polarization in the United States reached the level of pernicious in 2015 and remains so to this day.

A new study led by scientists with University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences maps out the status of crocodile populations in south Florida over the past 40 years to learn how they’ve responded to changes in the Everglades ecosystem. "American Crocodiles as restoration bioindicators in the Florida Everglades" was published in PLOS ONE on May 19.

In order to track pollution and air quality in the Glades, a reporting team from The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica set up air sensors at people’s homes to monitor pollution on days when the state authorized cane burning and projected that the smoke would blow toward them. Health and air-quality experts say this kind of exposure does pose health risks both in the short term and over the course of the months during burn season. The interactive feature story was published on July 8.

As doctors, health officials, and researchers around the world continue working to find ways to combat COVID-19 and detect the coronavirus that causes it SARS-CoV-2 some innovative approaches are being tested. The World Health Organization is featuring leading-edge research by our guest today in its database of global literature on coronavirus disease. Dr. Ajeet Kaushik is assistant professor of chemistry at Florida Polytechnic University. He is co-author on three scientific papers released in 2020 and 2021 that explore the use of nanomedicine, biosensors, and artificial intelligence to diagnose and combat COVID-19.

This week’s installment from News-Press Storyteller Amy Bennett Williams introduces us to the seemingly unlikely Southwest Florida artist James McDonald,…

We speak with Desmond Meade, he was a driving force behind the passage of Amendment 4 to the Florida constitution passed by 65% of voters in 2018. Meade is President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, Chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy, and author of the book “Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens” which recounts his struggles with addiction and homelessness before turning his life toward public service and the Amendment 4 campaign.

In his new book, “Fort Myers Historic Hurricanes” Tom Hall offers a history of severe storms that have impacted southwest Florida dating all the way back to 1841, but he also provides a dire warning about this area’s severe risk from hurricanes and storm surge in general. It opens with a hurricane in 1841 that swept across the region making landfall near Sanibel Island and bringing 14' of storm surge to the U.S. Army fort on Punta Rassa.

Jeremey Hobson has worked in public radio for more than 20 years and was a host for NPR's Here & Now for more than seven years. Now, he is launching a new live, nationwide call-in show called The Middle with the goal of elevating the voices of Americans who live in between the coasts and bringing a wider variety of voices to the public radio airwaves. He and his team are in town preparing to do the show from the WGCU studio so we talk with him about how The Middle came to be and why he believes it’s important to bring a show like this to the public radio airwaves now.

Hurricane Ian impacted nearly 5-million acres of farm and grazing land, with about 700-thousand acres receiving Category 4 force winds. According to the University of Florida’s Institute of Food & Agricultural Sciences, or IFAS, early estimates put the economic impact just to agriculture in Florida at somewhere between 786 million and 1.56 billion dollars with citrus and vegetables most affected.