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1 week ago | 
npr.org | Regina G. Barber |Hannah Chinn |Kimberly McCoy
Wiggles in space: how scientists find distant planets : Short Wave Dune. Star Wars. Alien. Science fiction movies love alien worlds, and so do we. But how do scientists find planets outside our solar system in real life? One way is by looking for the stars that wiggle. Historically, astronomers have measured those wiggles via the Doppler method, carefully analyzing how the star's light shifts.
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2 weeks ago | 
npr.org | Rachel Carlson |Regina G. Barber |Hannah Chinn
Here's why researchers are making new psychedelic-like drugs — without the trip Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1243652744/1269030122" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Individual neurons are labeled with fluorescent proteins using the brainbow technique.
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3 weeks ago | 
npr.org | Jonathan Lambert |Regina G. Barber |Hannah Chinn |Rebecca Ramirez
How did iguanas end up in Fiji? By raft Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1266983501/1268720494" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> A native green iguana on Fiji. For years, biologists puzzled over how these iguanas had ended up in the South Pacific, so far from other iguana species. A new study sheds light on their evolution.
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4 weeks ago | 
npr.org | Emily Kwong |Hannah Chinn |Rebecca Ramirez
In the Arctic, microalgae are doing the limbo Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1240892106/1268125326" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> To observe the microalgae of the Arctic, biogeochemist Clara Hoppe and her team spent months on a ship embedded in sea ice as part of the MOSAiC expedition, sampling ice and seawater.
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1 month ago | 
npr.org | Hannah Chinn |Emily Kwong |Rebecca Ramirez
What the COVID-19 pandemic tells us about how viruses evolve Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1240552684/1268282589" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Concept image of COVID-19 cells (variants Gamma, Delta, and Omicron). For a long time, scientists couldn't figure out where Omicron had come from. Now, studies appear to point to one specific group.
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1 month ago | 
npr.org | Maria Godoy |Hannah Chinn |Regina G. Barber |Rebecca Ramirez |Jane Greenhalgh
The U.S. measles outbreak is growing. Here's what to know Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1266983411/1268034538" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> An illustration of the measles virus showing giant multinucleated cells, or Warthin-Finkeldey cells. These cells are found in hyperplastic lymph nodes early in the course of a measles infection.
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1 month ago | 
npr.org | Hannah Chinn |Regina G. Barber |Kimberly McCoy |Rebecca Ramirez
Malte Mueller/Getty Images Malte Mueller/Getty Images Biological sex is all over the news lately. Between the presidential executive order affecting passport policy, moving transgender inmates between prisons and regulating women's sports, appeals to "the biological reality of sex" are constant. The truth is that biological sex, like a lot of scientific categories, is nuanced.
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1 month ago | 
npr.org | Ari Daniel |Regina G. Barber |Hannah Chinn |Rebecca Ramirez
This scientist is on a quest ... to salvage whale brains Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1263339272/1266999630" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> A year and a half ago, neuroscientist Kamilla Souza got the call she'd been waiting for: A baby humpback whale had died just offshore. She wanted its brain.
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2 months ago | 
npr.org | Regina G. Barber |Emily Kwong |Kimberly McCoy |Hannah Chinn |Alejandra Márquez Janse |Scott Detrow
Room for dessert? Here's why your brain says yes to sugar Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1232862552/1266832107" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> One of the ways the body signals fullness after a meal involves satiety neurons located in the hypothalamus. Sugar seems to hijack that system.
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2 months ago | 
npr.org | Hannah Chinn |Regina G. Barber |Rebecca Ramirez
Like a snake eating its own tail: What happens when AI consumes its own data? Download Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1263339268/1266586586" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> In large language model collapse, there are generally three sources of errors: The model itself, the way the model is trained and the data — or lack thereof — that the model is trained on.
