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Research & Discovery Archive

The art heist paradox: Why better police work can lead to more stolen masterpieces

When a multi-million-dollar masterpiece vanishes from a museum, the public calls for tougher criminal penalties and better-funded police task forces. But research from Wake Forest University suggests that some of these intuitive solutions can backfire, resulting in more art crime, not less. In their paper published in the Journal of Cultural Economics, Wake Forest Professor…

Categories: Experts, Research & Discovery

Temperature measurement error may cause climate-impact studies to understate impacts by 15% or more

When policymakers and city officials plan for climate change, they rely on economic studies showing how extreme heat impacts violent crime, public health, energy grids, and crop yields. However, a new study published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists reveals a hidden problem in that research: the temperature proxies used…

Categories: Research & Discovery

Wake Forest partners with Historic Bethabara Park to save 18th-century artifacts

Archaeologist Terry Brock and a team of students are working to salvage artifacts from Historic Bethabara Park in Winston-Salem. Their efforts to conserve and catalog thousands of pieces of pottery and other items from Bethabara (pronounced beth-ab-uh-ruh) will shed light on the first Moravian settlement in North Carolina, which dates to the 1750s. A new…

Categories: Community Impact, Research & Discovery, Undergraduate research

How do human pathogens adapt? New Wake Forest research holds some clues

Research underway in the lab of Rebecca Alexander, professor in Wake Forest University’s Department of Chemistry, is shedding light on a peculiar human bacteria, Mycoplasma penetrans. Alexander’s work to understand how and why this unique pathogen acts as it does could one day lead to new classes of drugs that better target illnesses associated with…

Categories: Research & Discovery

Depression and stress feed long-term fatigue in breast cancer patients

For breast cancer survivors, new research shows that feelings of depression and perceptions of psychological stress make the biggest difference in whether they experience fatigue up to two years after chemotherapy started. Researchers had thought that damage to the heart caused by chemotherapy would be the main contributor to survivor fatigue. But that turned out…

Categories: Research & Discovery

AI agents are all the rage—but research shows they leak private data

Before you prompt AI to answer another question or perform another task, a Wake Forest computer scientist wants you to know it could expose your sensitive data. Ying Zhang, an assistant professor in Wake Forest University’s Department of Computer Science, studies security in software engineering. Her latest research, “How Your Credentials Are Leaked by LLM…

Categories: Research & Discovery

New economic research suggests less can be more in Federal Reserve announcements.

With Federal Reserve communications, it seems intuitive that clearer, more precise information is always better—especially when dealing with money. But Wake Forest University economists Aeimit Lakdawala and Jinyoung Seo, together with Myungkyu Shim of Yonsei University, show that this is not always the case. The team’s new working paper, “On the Optimal Precision of Central…

Categories: Research & Discovery

Stop pursuing happiness. Build something stronger.

Society often views happiness as a destination to be reached through self-help books and the advice of Instagram influencers. Christian Waugh, professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, says the pursuit of resilience—rather than happiness—provides a more sustainable framework for navigating life’s stressors.   Waugh studies emotions, stress and coping and has published research on how…

Categories: Experts, Research & Discovery

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