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5 days ago | 
wrvo.org | Emily Kwong |Regina Barber |Hannah Chinn |Rebecca Ramirez
In 2018, computer scientist Sasha Luccioni was an AI researcher for Morgan Stanley — and couldn't shake this existential worry. "I essentially was getting more and more climate anxiety. I was really feeling this profound disconnect between my job and my values and the things that I cared about," Luccioni told NPR. So Luccioni quit her job.
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1 week ago | 
wrvo.org | Emily Kwong |Regina Barber |Hannah Chinn |Rebecca Ramirez
As the tech industry has grown, so too have data centers. Data centers are enormous buildings filled with hundreds of thousands of computers that store cloud data and power artificial intelligence. To keep up with computing demands, data centers use electricity and sometimes chilled water to keep those computers cool. The result? A surge in energy and water use that has caught the attention of scientists and lawmakers.
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1 week ago | 
wrvo.org | Regina Barber |Emily Kwong |Juana Summers |Rachel Carlson
The recent box office smash hit Minecraft is based on a very popular video game by the same name. It's known for its block graphics, calming music that set the vibe for players to "mine" for building materials and gems. The game is very popular with children and adults alike. One of those adults is cognitive scientist Charley Wu, who recently published a paper in the journal Nature Communicationsthat utilized Minecraft to study how people learn.
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1 month ago | 
tpr.org | Rachel Carlson |Regina Barber |Hannah Chinn
Researchers are studying psychedelics as a possible treatment for conditions like depression, PTSD and substance use disorders. But they don't know exactly how these drugs work. Getting the answer to this question is especially difficult when people often take psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin for their trademark "trips."Some researchers think these psychoactive, spiritual effects are a big part of why patients could benefit from psychedelic drugs.
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1 month ago | 
wrvo.org | Rachel Carlson |Regina Barber |Hannah Chinn
Researchers are studying psychedelics as a possible treatment for conditions like depression, PTSD and substance use disorders. But they don't know exactly how these drugs work. Getting the answer to this question is especially difficult when people often take psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin for their trademark "trips."Some researchers think these psychoactive, spiritual effects are a big part of why patients could benefit from psychedelic drugs.
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1 month ago | 
tpr.org | Regina Barber |Rachel Carlson |Kimberly McCoy |Juana Summers
Running an entire marathon takes a lotof energy. Neuroscientist Carlos Matute knows this: he's run 18 of them. He wondered how runners' bodies get the energy they need to make it to the finish line. His new research in the journal Nature Metabolism may be the first step in answering the question – and suggests their brains might be (temporarily) depleting a fatty substance that coats nerve cells called myelin. Myelin makes up about 40% of the brain. It helps electrical signals travel around.
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Jan 9, 2025 | 
organicconsumers.org | Organic Bytes |Emily Kwong |Regina Barber |Rachel Carlson
Organic BytesNewsletter #878: PFAS Linked To Serious Health Problems! Guardian staff, The Guardian:“PFAS have been used in manufacturing and added to consumer products for decades. They are used across dozens of industries and in a huge range of consumer products because they are so effective at making items resistant to water, stains and grease. Your non-stick frying pan, for example, probably uses PFAS to make the “non-stick” coating.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
wrvo.org | Regina Barber
Getting enough sleep regularly can be tough — and even harder when you're traveling for the holidays. "We need sleep like we need water,"says Jade Wu, a behavioral sleep medicine psychologist and author of the book Hello Sleep. She and Short Wave host Regina G. Barber discuss what's happening to our bodies when we get jet lag and the clocks in our body get out of whack. They also get into the science of the circadian rhythm and how to prepare for a long flight across time zones.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
wrvo.org | Regina Barber
How did life start on Earth? The answer is a big scientific mystery scientists are actively investigating. After talking with many scientists, host Regina G. Barber found that an abundance of water on Earth is most likely key, in some way, to the origin of life — specifically, in either deep sea hydrothermal vents or in tide pools.
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Oct 7, 2024 | 
wrvo.org | Regina Barber
Fruit fly brains are smaller than a poppy seed, but that doesn't mean they aren't complex. For the first time, researchers have published a complete diagram of 50 million connections in an adult fruit flies brain. The journal Nature simultaneously published nine papers related to this new brain map, called a "connectome." Where a genome shows all the genes in a cell or an organism, a connectome shows all the connections between neurons in a brain.
