Emily Kwong

Hey, short wavers.

Emily Kwong here.

And Rachel Carlson with our biweekly science news roundup.

I'm so jealous.

A house divided.

Emily and I both need coffee in the morning to function.

Sorry, Emily, for calling you out.

Affirmative.

Sasha, we are more than coffee aficionados on the show.

We also have updates for you on dream research and what's going on in Scorpion's arsenal of weapons at the molecular level.

Stuff of nightmares.

Exactly.

And you can let us know at the end if it's more exciting and cool to know about scorpions or terrifying.

Fair.

Here's the thing about coffee.

It's extremely variable.

Visit the barista at your local fancy cafe, and they'll tell you the flavor of your cup is affected by so many different things, like the coffee beans, the way those beans were fermented and roasted, the temperature it's brewed at, the chemicals in the water that you use to brew it.

So scientists at the University of Oregon wanted to see if they could change that.

They used a tool that's usually used to measure the charge in batteries to assess the flavor of coffee.

This is Christopher Hendon, a chemistry professor and a coffee expert, and he's the lead researcher on a study about this in the journal Nature Communications.