Approximately 75% of the world’s commercially grown crops depend on pollination, said Dr. Joseph Cazier, professor in the Department of Computer Information Systems and executive director of Appalachian’s Center for Analytics Research and Education (CARE). Many of the pollinators — including bees (the most common managed pollinator), butterflies, birds, moths and some animals, such as bats — are in decline or facing extinction, endangering the food supply, he said. “What is missing is a way to track pollinators systematically.”

Two faculty members in Appalachian’s Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences have published a culminating article about ancient human footprints in the journal Scientific Reports after a decade of research. The footprints give clues to human social behavior tens of thousands of years ago.