The State of Things

North Carolina entrepreneur Josh Whiton had his first business at the age of five when he sold tadpoles to his neighborhood friends. Now, he is the CEO of TransLoc Inc., a company that tracks city buses in real time.

The world we live in is a complex, evolving ecosystem. North Carolina State University ecologist and evolutionary biologist Rob Dunn wanted to explore how mankind’s interaction with other living species has come to define who we are and why we act the way we do. He found that the human body itself plays host to a myriad of living creatures, some good and some bad, and that our relationships with these life forms are as mysterious as they are vital to our existence.

Musician John Darnielle got his start by recording tunes on a boombox in the early 1990s. To his surprise, folks went crazy for his lo-fi sound and his band, The Mountain Goats, quickly formed a huge cult following that spans the globe. The band’s 7th album, “All Eternals Deck,” was recently released on Merge Records. For it, Darnielle abandoned the nostalgic vibe that initially earned him critical acclaim and turned to horror flicks from the 1970s for inspiration.

More than 190 million people in the United States are overweight. That’s two-thirds of the American population and almost half of that number are obese. Research into the causes of obesity is showing that much more than willpower is needed to tackle it. Obesity has ties to addiction and depression and a person's environment may play a bigger role than once thought.

Economists say the recession is officially over, but many people remain out of work and the unemployed are still feeling the effects of the down economy. But new research suggests that those who never lost their jobs are also still suffering. Some took on twice the responsibilities for no new pay or reduced pay. The effect of that kind of pressure has yet to be studied but experts suspect we will feel the strain at work and at home for years to come.

After volunteering as a high school teacher in the slums of Jamaica and serving the people of Nigeria during a devastating civil war, Jock Brandis found himself mentally exhausted and disillusioned. He left the service life for work in the film industry, a career move that took him to Wilmington, N.C. But a colleague persuaded Brandis to return to Africa, where he met a group of women peanut shellers in Mali. He wound up inventing a peanut shelling machine – the Universal Nut Sheller – to help them with their work.