Emily Kwong
Appearances
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
In 2018, Sasha Luciani started a new job, AI researcher for Morgan Stanley. She was excited to learn something new in the field of AI, but she couldn't shake this worry.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Benjamin Lee studies computer architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Generative AI refers to the AI that uses large language models.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
And data center construction is only going to increase. On January 21st, the day after his second inauguration, President Trump announced a private joint venture to build 20 large data centers across the country, as heard here on NBC.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
This new project, known as Stargate, would together consume 15 gigawatts of power. That would be like 15 new Philadelphia-sized cities consuming energy. Consider this. As much as big tech says they want to get to net zero, there are no regulations forcing them to do so. So how is the industry thinking about its future and its environmental footprint? From NPR, I'm Emily Kwong.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Let's consider this from NPR. OK, so the four cloud giants, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, all have climate goals, goals for hitting net zero carbon emissions, most by 2030, Amazon by 2040. And there's a few ways they can get there. Let's start with a very popular energy source for big tech, nuclear.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Because Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet, which runs Google, just signed an agreement, along with other companies, that supports tripling the global nuclear supply by 2050. And along with Microsoft, these four companies have signed agreements to purchase nuclear energy, an industry that has been stagnant for years.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Microsoft has committed to buying power from an old nuclear plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. You may remember that was the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979. And NPR's Nina Totenberg talked to kids in the Harrisburg area right after. You know what evacuation is?
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
While some radioactive gas was released, thankfully, it wasn't enough to cause serious health effects. And Microsoft now wants to build this nuclear site back. In a way, AI companies are turning into energy brokers. But my science desk colleague, Jeff Brumfield, sees a discrepancy in this between the AI people and the nuclear energy people.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Because of accidents like Three Mile Island, Jeff says that nothing in the nuclear industry ever happens quickly. It's also extremely expensive. And while solar and wind energy combined with batteries is quicker to build and more inexpensive than nuclear or gas power plants, it still takes time to build. And there are problems hooking up new energy sources to the grid.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
So Luciani quit her job and joined a growing movement to make AI more sustainable. Since 2022, AI has boomed and it's caused a surge in energy consumption. Tech companies are racing to build data centers to keep up these huge buildings filled with hundreds of thousands of computers that require a lot of energy.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
So in the meantime, many data centers will continue to use fossil fuels. But there's another solution here, and that's to make data centers themselves more efficient, through better hardware, better chips, and more efficient cooling systems. One of the most innovative methods on the rise is liquid cooling.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Basically, running a synthetic fluid through the hottest parts of the server to take the heat away, or immersing whole servers in a cool bath. It's the same idea as running coolant through your car engine, and a much faster way to cool off a hot computer. Here's Benjamin Lee again at UPenn.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
One of the biggest providers of liquid cooling is Isotope. David Craig is their recently retired CEO and based in the UK.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Craig says that the older way of cooling data centers, basically there's lots of methods, but it's a daisy chain of moving heat with air and water, is consumptive. With liquid cooling, a lot of the heat stays in the system and computers don't have these massive swings in temperature.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Liquid cooling, however... is expensive, which makes it hard to scale. But iZotope has announced public partnerships with Hewlett-Packard and Intel, and a spokesperson at Meta told me they anticipate some of the company's liquid cooling-enabled data centers will be up and running by 2026.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Throughout my many emails and seven hours of phone conversations with spokespersons at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, too, there was one innovation they were kind of quiet about. And it's the one that scientists and engineers outside of big tech were most excited about. and that is smaller AI models.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
One's good enough to complete a lot of the tasks we care about, but in a much less energy-intensive way. Basically, a third and final solution to AI's climate problem is using less AI. One major disruptor in this space is DeepSeek, the chatbot out of a company in China claiming to use less energy. We reached out to them for comment, but they did not reply. You see,
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Large language models like ChatGPT are often trained using large datasets, say by feeding the model over a million hours of YouTube content. But DeepSeq was trained by data from other language models. Benjamin Lee at UPenn says this is called a mixture of experts.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
By 2028, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory forecasts the data centers could consume as much as 12 percent of the nation's electricity. And AI is also leading a surge in water consumption. It's a concern echoed all over social media.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Even though DeepSeq was trained more efficiently this way. Other scientists I spoke to pointed out it's still a big model. And Sasha Luciani at Hugging Face wants to walk away from those entirely.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
What Sasha is talking about are small language models, which have far fewer parameters and are trained for a specific task. And some tech companies are experimenting with this. Last year, Meta announced a smaller quantized version of some of their models. Microsoft announced a family of small models called PHY3.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
A spokesperson for Amazon said they're open to considering a number of models that can meet their customers' needs. And a spokesperson for Google said they did not have a comment about small language models at this time. So meanwhile, the race to build infrastructure for large language models is very much underway. Here's Kevin Miller, who runs global infrastructure at Amazon Web Services.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
If that is the level of computing we're headed for, Luciani has one last idea. An industry-wide score for AI models. Just like Energy Star became a widely recognized program for ranking the energy efficiency of appliances. She says that tech companies, however, are far from embracing something similar.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
So as a science reporter for NPR, my main question is, do we really need all of this computing power when we know it could imperil climate goals? And David Craig, the recently retired CEO of Isotope, chuckled when I asked this. He said, Emily, you know, human nature is against us.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
But here's something I think we can all think about. The AI revolution is still fairly new. Google CEO Sundar Pichai compared AI to the discovery of electricity. Except unlike the people during the industrial revolution, we know AI has a big climate cost. And there's still time to adjust how and how much of it we use.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
This episode was produced by Avery Keatley and Megan Lim, with audio engineering by Ted Meebane. It was edited by Adam Rainey, Sarah Robbins, and Rebecca Ramirez. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Emily Kwong. You can hear more science reporting like this on the science podcast I co-host every week, Shorewave. Check it out.
Consider This from NPR
AI and the Environment
Where will that water come from? And the four big data center operators with a growing water and carbon footprint are Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. And to be clear, all four of those are among NPR's financial supporters and pay to distribute some of our content.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Every month, NPR reporter Brian Mann checks a grim statistic, the federal tally of overdose deaths across the country. For years, that number only went up.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Consider this. The recent decline in overdose deaths is an unprecedented public health victory, one that shocked even experts in the field. Today, for our Weekly Reporter's Notebook series, we're going to unravel the mystery of this rapid reversal with Brian Mann, NPR's addiction correspondent. From NPR, I'm Emily Kwong.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
It's Consider This from NPR. In 2023, when federal data started to show a decline in overdose deaths, some public health experts were skeptical.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Maybe it was a fluke. But the next month, same thing.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
This is Nabaran Dasgupta, a leading addiction researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
The skepticism is now gone. So the question is, how did this happen? All Things Considered co-host Scott Detrow picks up the conversation from here, talking with NPR's addiction correspondent Brian Mann about the reasons behind this surprising public health victory.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Brian also started hearing the same thing from sources on the street. Like this man, Kevin Donaldson, who was using fentanyl and xylosine in Burlington, Vermont.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
Across the country, the number of overdose deaths has continued to drop to this day.
Consider This from NPR
Reporting on how America reduced the number of opioid deaths
That was NPR's addiction correspondent, Brian Mann, speaking with All Things Considered co-host, Scott Detrow. This episode was produced by Noah Caldwell and edited by Adam Rainey. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Emily Kwong.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
OK, so today is about the first 100 days of the Trump administration. And to help me out, I've got my colleagues, Selena Simmons-Duffin, who's been covering health and human services, and Gabriela Emanuel, who's been covering global health and foreign aid. Hi, everyone. Hi. Good to be here. Hi.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
OK, so let's start with the Department of Health and Human Services, which you have been covering, Selena. Yes. HHS is responsible for a lot, like a slew of programs that support everyday Americans' health and well-being. The CDC, the FDA, the NIH, many more. At the beginning of the month, you know, there were a lot of
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. President Trump's first 100 days in office have been defined, among many other things, by DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
cuts, like reduction in force messages that were sent to thousands of federal health agency staff. Selina, how did people respond to that?
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
And it's been a month since those notices went out. Do we have a better sense now of what programs have been cut and what programs remain? Kind of.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
OK, so these are. Deep cuts and they're broad cuts. Yes. Okay. And what is the potential impact long term, though, of losing these programs and these teams?
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
This is all forecasting into the future, but these are the kinds of things that this cut could make possible. Exactly. Gabriella Emanuel, you are on the Global Health and Development Desk. Yes. All of these federal funding cuts are obviously making a huge splash domestically, but they're also affecting people outside of the U.S., people who rely directly or indirectly on foreign aid.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
At the direction of Elon Musk, the department has fired tens of thousands of federal employees, dismantled whole parts of different federal agencies, and made deep cuts to spending on foreign aid and scientific research. And it's hard to know which of these changes are temporary and which will ripple for years, even decades to come.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
How has the U.S. historically contributed to foreign aid and how many countries are really feeling these changes?
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
Why has the U.S. historically put so many resources towards improving the health of people in other parts of the world?
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
And the U.S. is pulling back from international aid efforts. At the beginning of this year, President Trump signed an executive order to take the United States out of the World Health Organization. Plus, we spoke earlier about the Department of Government Efficiency dismantling U.S. aid. So how is this loss of aid going to impact people in countries around the world?
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
Because many of Doge's initiatives have been reversed or delayed by the courts or because of public backlash. That's as Musk's 130-day term as a special government employee is winding down. So we on Shortwave wanted to look around and ask, what could this all mean to science in the long term?
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
And what I'm hearing from you, Gabriella, is just that a lot of these Jenga blocks were pulled out overnight.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
What I'm hearing from you both is that access is going to change, whether it's local citizens no longer knowing whether their food is safe or folks internationally, U.S. allied countries losing HIV medication. At the end of the day, what do you both think this means for everyday people?
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
That's Gabriela Emanuel and Selena Simmons-Duffin. Thank you so much for joining me.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
Thank you. Short wavers, there have been massive changes to climate science, too, under the new administration. We'll cover those developments in a future episode, so keep a lookout for that. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. Special thanks to Rebecca Davis and Carmel Roth.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
Today, with two of my colleagues on NPR's science desk, we're going to recap the first 100 days of health and science under the current Trump administration. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
Are DOGE Cuts Making America Healthy?
Beth Donovan is our senior director and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Every night, the pineal gland in our brain releases a bit of melatonin.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Melatonin is widely considered safe for adults in low doses and for kids with certain neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions that get in the way of a good night's sleep.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
But some experts worry that we don't know enough about how regularly taking melatonin affects kids in the long term. So today on the show, melatonin and kids. What the research says, how melatonin is being used, and how to navigate obstacles for getting kids enough Cs. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Okay, so Michael, we are talking today about melatonin. It is a hormone that the human body naturally produces. But I want to hear more about the history of this supplement. This is synthetic melatonin that a lot of people have started taking, and some people are giving it to their kids. When did people start taking melatonin?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
And that's mostly for adults. When did children start to use melatonin?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Hey, Shore Wavers, Emily Kwong here. Okay, so possibly my favorite thing in the entire world is a good night's sleep. I mean, nothing makes a bigger difference to my mental and physical health. Without quality sleep, we're less productive, grumpy. It can even affect our hearts. And for kids, sleep is crucial for physical, mental, and emotional development.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Yeah. A lot of melatonin packaging is just very friendly looking. I mean, it's like these big bottles and the melatonin supplements come in sometimes very yummy flavors. Sometimes they're gummies. So is it really being marketed to kids in a very deliberate way?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Yeah. And I want to add here. A key distinction you make throughout this reporting is that melatonin is not a vitamin. It is a hormone. Why is that distinction so important?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Let's talk about the research. So obviously there's not enough, but for what is available, what do sleep scientists have to say about kids taking melatonin?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Now, melatonin is considered fairly safe and benign in terms of overdose potential. But if there are side effects to melatonin, what are they?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
But there are a lot of things keeping us awake these days. Screens, electronics, stress. Researchers say that, like adults, kids are having problems falling asleep and staying asleep. So more and more parents are turning to a supplement called melatonin as a possible solution.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Was melatonin ever supposed to be taken long term? Because it seems like it was originally designed to be a sleep aid for a short term situation. Yeah.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Okay. For all the desperate parents hanging on your every word, what do experts suggest for kids who have trouble sleeping but they want to try other solutions first?
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Well, we want kids to have a good night's sleep for sure. And we want parents to sleep too. So Michael, thank you for dipping your toe in the melatonin research waters so that we all can get a good night's sleep.
Short Wave
Should Kids Be Taking Melatonin?
Michael Scholzen is a contributing editor at Undark Magazine, where he writes and edits stories about science. And he recently looked into why more and more people are using sleep supplements, especially with their kids. Melatonin is a hormone, and it's one that our bodies produce naturally.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
And the illustrator, Lindsay Lee, drew it like a circus performer. So the spider is being launched out of a cannon with a cape and a crash helmet.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
Whee! Saad read me the whole comic. It was awesome. It's based on actual research, a paper published in the journal Current Biology in 2020 that was led by Simone Alexander. For a lot of scientists, after publishing, they just call it a day. But back in 2020, when Saad went to check if anyone had actually read the paper...
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
So Saad decided that from that point on, for every research paper the lab published, they would also invest in creating a comic book. Today on the show, we jump into a biophysics comic book to learn how animals eject fluids and why a comic about butt-flicking insects is a valuable way to take science beyond the lab. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Saad Bamla is a scientist and a tinkerer. At his lab at Georgia Tech, he leads a group studying the physics of life.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
Okay, so Saad, your comic series has a name. It's called The Curious Zoo of Extraordinary Organisms. Yes. Yeah, and your main illustrators are Lindsay Lee and Jordan Culver, so shout out to them. We're going to walk through a couple of the comics, starting with the one called Behold the Bug that Super Propels P. And this comic is all about a bug called the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
So the co-creators of this comic, Jordan Culver and Rick Wirth, depict this sharpshooter as an outlaw in a cowboy hat with a catapult on its butt to fling away a bead of pee. And this is known as a butt flicker. How did you figure out how the butt flicker works? And how do you even measure the speed at which this glassy winged sharpshooter ejects its pee into the world?
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
It ejects them, you write in the comic, 40 times faster than a cheetah accelerates. And the droplet moves faster than the butt flicker. And you compare it to like as if a baseball were to move faster than the arm of the baseball pitcher. Yeah. How is that even possible? How can the droplet like pick up speed in the air?
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
The Bamla lab studies the biomechanics, so the movement of different organisms. Springtails, flamingos, worms, cicadas. A few years ago, Saad decided to turn one of his lab's research papers into a comic book.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
And because they're so small, surface tension, you're saying, would keep the drop stuck to them. So it'd be like if our pee just like wouldn't come off of us. So they also need the flicker to just be like, get away.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
Yeah, and what's cool is in the comic you say that studying super propulsion like this could help us humans design devices to fling away liquid too.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
And our friend, the glassy-winged sharpshooter, makes a return in the comic Captain Cicada and the Justice League. which is based on two papers about fluid ejection and nature. And I want to focus on the part in the comic that's a confrontation between our guy, the sharpshooter, and the much bigger cicada.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
Howdy, cousin. Word is that you're hogging all the xylem around these parts.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
I think we need to settle this with a good old-fashioned shootout.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
Yeah. Evolution is amazing because the comic then ends with all these other animals that can jet fluid, like not just pee. Yeah. Yeah, you have... The Archer for fish hunting. The Octopus for deception. Together, along with the Spitting Spider, they become the Justice League. Did Marvel sue you over this?
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
This comic is set deep in the Amazon rainforest, and it's all about the slingshot spider. This spider has an amazing adaptation to turn its web into a high-speed trap to catch prey.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
This comic work has garnered quite a bit of attention, a National Science Foundation career grant. You've received so many different forms of recognition for this work. But when you step outside the scientific community, How do you see the comics in regards to, like, just people who perhaps don't know anything about science and don't trust science?
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
This episode was produced by Burleigh McCoy and Rachel Carlson and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez and Jeff Brumfield. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Kweisi Lee was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director. And Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. See you tomorrow on Shortwave from NPR.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
And Beth was part of a team that put down geophones, so little sensors, to observe and record the vibrations these fiddler crops were creating in the sand. It's super dune-like, sandworm-esque to me. The team published their research last week in the Journal of Experimental Biology, and they saw that this dance had four different stages.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
I think I would too, honestly. And in each of these courtship steps, the crabs were increasing their seismic vibrations.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
Lots of reasons, actually. For one, there is 8.2 billion people on the planet, more than ever, and people need to eat. True. So there's been this massive effort in countries around the world to figure out if they can grow meat tissue in the lab.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
Hey, short wavers. Rachel Carlson here. And Emily Kwong. With our biweekly science news roundup featuring the hosts of All Things Considered. And today we have Elsa Chang.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
Minghao and his team used this special machine called a hollow fiber bioreactor— It delivered nutrients and oxygen to the myoblasts, mimicking blood vessels in the animal body. And after a few days, the myoblasts started to grow and form this cultured meat. The team published their results in the Cell Press Journal Trends in Biotechnology this week.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
True, there are. But a lot of lab-grown meat on the market is artificially assembled. So the myoblasts are fused together. And this work demonstrates a way for labs to grow meat into one large tissue, thicker than a centimeter. Hmm. So it does bring us closer to a world where a whole lab-grown chicken breast could be scientifically possible. Okay.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but you've probably heard researchers are studying psychedelic therapy for patients with depression, PTSD, lots of other things. But people with conditions like schizophrenia are usually advised not to take psychedelics. So even if it turns out that these drugs do help treat certain mental health conditions, a lot of patients would be left behind.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
Kind of. One of the researchers told me that I should think of each molecule like a car.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
This is David Olson. He's the director of the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics at the University of California, Davis.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
So first, how fiddler crabs drum their mating songs into the sand.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
Yeah, so the study published this week tested JRT on mice, not people. And another researcher I spoke to who wasn't involved in the study, Anahita Basir-Nia, says while it's a promising step in the field, we still don't know how it would translate to humans and whether it would actually be non-hallucinogenic. So there's a lot more we need to learn.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
And then we have a dinner for you, chicken nuggets, but grown in the lab. Ew.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
You can hear more of Elsa on Consider This, NPR's afternoon podcast about what the news means for you. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin and Catherine Fink. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Watanane. Tyler Jones checked the facts. I'm Emily Kwong. And I'm Rachel Carlson. Thanks for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
Good Vibrations: How Fiddler Crabs Mate
Ew. Okay. And a drug like LSD without the trip. What's the point? You'll see. It's like a very elaborate date provided by science. All that on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
Specifically, the lead researcher of the study, Charlie Wu, said he was curious about the argument that human success is not only because of individual brains.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
In some scenarios the rewards were clustered which altered how much players had to interact with each other and learn socially. And what the researchers found is that the most successful players were the most adaptive like switching between individual mining and using social learning when the situation called for it.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
Hey, short wavers. Emily Kwong here. And Regina Barber. We're here with our biweekly science news roundup featuring the host of All Things Considered and fellow gamer. Pinball wizard. Juana Sars.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
Okay, but what does he mean by that? It means that individual learning and social learning are informing each other. And like that flexibility between switching between both of them is like the key to being really successful. And that's actually new. And using Minecraft to find that is also unique.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
And it's important that research keeps up with these like modern social interactions.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
Ivan is talking about how if a home cook is not careful, he can cause proteins in the cheese to clump together, which makes for like a stringy sauce that coats the pasta unevenly.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
So there is a critical threshold of starch above which the sauce does not separate, and that's 1%. So if you go below 1% starch concentrations relative to the mass of the cheese, you get cheese clumps. And the ideal ratio is 2.5%. I am going to need a recipe. Emily, help me.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
So they were curious about what the link was. And in this study, the researchers looked at samples from almost a thousand patients around the world. And the researchers saw that the colibactin left behind DNA mutations that were over three times more common in early onset cases than when people were diagnosed after age 70.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
And they looked at the timing of these mutations and think they happen in the first 10 years of a person's life. Oh, interesting.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
And that knowledge is power. With this lead, researchers can ask the big questions, like why those changes are happening, what other factors might be important, and if there are aspects of our environment, our lifestyle, or diet, they may cause these microbes to behave differently. Juana, thank you so much for coming on.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
This episode was produced by Erica Ryan and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez and Patrick Jaron-Watananen.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
And I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
What Can Minecraft Teach Us About Learning?
Yeah, it's got very blocky graphics, calming music, and one of the goals of the game is to collect resources around this expansive landscape of mining, building materials, gems, and food. Right.
Up First from NPR
Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
But some experts worry that we don't know enough about how regularly taking melatonin affects kids in the long term. So today on the show, melatonin and kids, what the research says, how melatonin is being used, and how to navigate obstacles for getting kids enough Cs. I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shorewave, the science podcast from NPR.
Up First from NPR
Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Okay, so Michael, we are talking today about melatonin. It is a hormone that the human body naturally produces. But I want to hear more about the history of this supplement. This is synthetic melatonin that a lot of people have started taking, and some people are giving it to their kids. When did people start taking melatonin?
Up First from NPR
Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
And that's mostly for adults. When did children start to use melatonin?
Up First from NPR
Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Yeah. A lot of melatonin packaging is just very friendly looking. I mean, it's like these big bottles and the melatonin supplements come in sometimes very yummy flavors. Sometimes they're gummies. So is it really being marketed to kids in a very deliberate way?
Up First from NPR
Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Yeah. And I want to add here. A key distinction you make throughout this reporting is that melatonin is not a vitamin. It is a hormone. Why is that distinction so important?
Up First from NPR
Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Yeah.
Up First from NPR
Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Let's talk about the research. So obviously there's not enough, but for what is available, what do sleep scientists have to say about kids taking melatonin?
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
It's true. We don't really know.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
But
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Now, melatonin is considered fairly safe and benign in terms of overdose potential. But if there are side effects to melatonin, what are they?
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Was melatonin ever supposed to be taken long term? Because it seems like it was originally designed to be a sleep aid for a short term situation. Yeah.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
It might be beneficial to them.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Okay. For all the desperate parents hanging on your every word, what do experts suggest for kids who have trouble sleeping but they want to try other solutions first?
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Well, we want kids to have a good night's sleep for sure. And we want parents to sleep too. So Michael, thank you for dipping your toe in the melatonin research waters so that we all can get a good night's sleep.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. Maggie Luthar was the audio engineer. Beth Donovan is our senior director, and Colin Campbell is our senior vice president of podcasting strategy. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shore Wavers, Emily Kwong here. Okay, so possibly my favorite thing in the entire world is a good night's sleep. I mean, nothing makes a bigger difference to my mental and physical health. Without quality sleep, we're less productive, grumpy. It can even affect our hearts. And for kids, sleep is crucial for physical, mental, and emotional development.
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But there are a lot of things keeping us awake these days. Screens, electronics, stress. Researchers say that, like adults, kids are having problems falling asleep and staying asleep. So more and more parents are turning to a supplement called melatonin as a possible solution.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Michael Scholzen is a contributing editor at Undark Magazine, where he writes and edits stories about science. And he recently looked into why more and more people are using sleep supplements, especially with their kids. Melatonin is a hormone, and it's one that our bodies produce naturally.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Every night, the pineal gland in our brain releases a bit of melatonin.
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Grading Trump's First 100 Days, Presidential Retaliation, Detained Student Speaks
Melatonin is widely considered safe for adults in low doses and for kids with certain neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions that get in the way of a good night's sleep.