Girls today are under enormous pressure. Pressures from social media, sexism, school, sports, peers. All of it has made what should be an exuberant time of life overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. Researchers in Cleveland are finding ways to help teens manage stress and other issues. In this week’s Exploradio, we meet the women behind the country’s first school-based center for research on girls.

Exploradio

Exploradio: How Research Is Helping Stressed Out Girls Build Resilience

America has a long tradition of the lone inventor, and Ohio has long been a leader in aerospace innovation. An inventor in Oberlin combines the two by creating a new form of aircraft in his backyard. On this week’s Exploradio, we look at the quest for a flying machine with no moving parts.

Exploradio: An Oberlin Inventor Pushes the Limits of Ion-Powered Flight

First impressions can have lasting consequences. New research is delving into how we evaluate a stranger’s face, and pass judgments based on fleeting impressions. A new, worldwide collaborative started at Ashland University is helping explain that process, and tackle other questions. In this week’s Exploradio, WKSU’s Jeff St.Clair looks at how the Psychological Science Accelerator is putting a new face on how science is done.

Exploradio: Putting a New Face on Psychological Research

This story was originally published on June 3, 2019. WKSU asked listeners for ideas for what to explore in the next episode of our Exploradio science series. We had some great suggestions. When the ideas were put to a vote, the top choice was – “Is enough being done to find a cure for type-1 diabetes?” In this week’s Exploradio, we try to find the answer.

Exploradio: A Listener Asks Why a Cure For Diabetes Remains Elusive? We Follow the Science.

There is an ecosystem living inside of us that scientists are only beginning to comprehend. Our microbiome aids in digestion and metabolism, but when out of whack, can cause discomfort, disease… even depression. In this week’s Exploradio, we meet researchers in Cleveland who are working toward a better understanding of how to have a happy gut.

Exploradio: Cleveland Researchers Look for New Ways to Treat the Incurable Crohn's Disease

"If we find life on another planet, it's likely going to be microbial," said Ashley Manning-Berg, assistant professor in geology at The University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. "So a lot of the focus for evidence for life is not just to learn about the ecosystems on early Earth, it's a way of telling us that if life evolved and then died on Mars, what do we look for? Manning-Berg is studying how billion-year-old fossils of microorganisms were preserved on Earth, so we can know what to look for on other planets. “So if you have a microfossil that is torn and kind of just looks like maybe a little squiggle in a rock, how do we know that's a microfossil? So by looking at the morphologies of the rocks that we know have life, we can get a sense of whether or not that's a microbial morphology,” said Berg. “Looking at the chemistry, so is there carbon there? Is that carbon thermally altered? Has it been changed since its deposition? Berg is also studying how the silica that preserves her

Exploradio Origins: Studying Early Earth to Unlock Secrets of Astro-Biology

Cleveland’s greatest export may not be world-class healthcare, auto parts, or even LeBron James, it might be a management philosophy. Appreciative Inquiry was invented at Case Western Reserve University three decades ago and has become a transformative tool for companies and organizations around the world. The process was used recently to help create a new vision for Cleveland. In this week’s Exploradio, we look into the science of positive planning.

Exploradio: Created in Cleveland, Appreciative Inquiry Has Transformed the World of Management

Epilepsy is a condition that we usually think of as being in the brain. Doctors typically identify it by measuring brain activity. However, new evidence has emerged showing that the brain may not be the only place we can see epilepsy. Roberto Galan is an adjunct associate professor of electrical engineering at Case Western Reserve University. “When I investigated the electrocardiograms - the electrical activity of the heart - in patients with epilepsy, and in control patients, I found significant differences in the rhythm that the heart displays," Galan said. By analyzing the EKGs of people with epilepsy, he found that their heart rate was much more affected by their breathing than the heart rates of people without epilepsy. “We could see enhanced synchrony between the lungs and the heart, or respiration and the heart, even before epilepsy was diagnosed from the brain's electrical activity,” said Galan. "So it may be a predictor of epilepsy even before it manifests as seizures.” If we

Exploradio Origins: Discovering Epilepsy Before the First Seizure

In the early 20 th century, physicists discovered cosmic rays- energetic particles zooming through deep space. Many of these come from the sun, and can cause the northern lights. However, a few, very mysteriously, come from somewhere else with enormous energy. “The real puzzle is no one has any idea what in the universe is capable of doing that," said Corbin Covault, professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University. "There's some ideas, like massive black holes sucking material down in the middle of galaxies, but when they do the calculations it's really, really not obvious.” To investigate the origin of these mysterious particles, scientists like Covault from all over the world teamed up to build the Pierre Auger observatory, in Argentina. “It's literally the size of Rhode Island - 3,000 square kilometers - spread out over the ground. Our sixteen hundred particle detectors, they're primarily they're just pure water,” Covault said. “But when the particles hit the water tank they

Exploradio Origins: Scientists Study Mystery Particles at Argentine Observatory

Like death and taxes, being hit by a computer virus seems inevitable. Cybercrime took a $100 billion bite out of the U.S. economy last year alone. It’s not just individuals who are hacked. Cities, schools and small businesses are increasingly targeted. In this week’s Exploradio, a look at local efforts to fight the onslaught by training the next generation of cyber warriors. Kelly Kendrick is IT director at Coventry Local Schools, a small district south of Akron. She says what began as an ordinary school day earlier this year began to go awry as the Internet slowed and files got jammed. “And then we realized there was a pattern,” says Kendrick. Soon it dawned on her that the school was under attack. “Within a 24 hour period we had to shut down the entire district,” she says. A malicious virus had not only taken over their computer network, it had disabled the heating and cooling systems and wiped out phone service. Luckily, she says they were able to stop the virus before it put a lock

Exploradio: Training a New Generation of Cyber Warriors

“Cultural geology in my eye is the interface of geology and human culture,” Joe Hannibal said. Joe Hannibal is curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History . He’s a fossil expert, but he’s also used his fossil and rock identification skills to track the movements of cultural materials. "When the Euro-Americans came into different parts of the country, they would first establish mills. Well, a lot of those mills have then burned down,” Hannibal said. "But millstones, well, they're made out of stone." Hannibal was examining some historic millstones in Ohio when he noticed they contained tiny spheres of fossilized algae, called charophytes. “So I wrote in my notebook, 'charophyte?' and came back and realized, oh my galoshes, these are charophytes and they must mean something and they're telling me something,” Hannibal said. Both Ohioans and Europeans made millstones out of a type of stone called chert, but only millstones from the Paris Basin contained

Exploradio Origins: A French Connection Unearthed in Millstones

When we think about it, we usually remember to breathe when we’re awake. But who’s at the controls when we’re sleeping? “We’re still continuing to understand the coupling between the neural control in the brain stem and the controlled system, which is the nasal pharynx and oral pharynx and the position of the tongue," said Kingman Strohl, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Case Western Reserve University . He’s interested in how the brain’s breathing control system can go awry, leading to blockages or pauses in our breathing, called apneas, that can wake us up. They keep us from getting good sleep. “All apneas during sleep all have a reduction in the neural activation of the system,” Strohl said. Studying how our brain controls our breathing got Strohl and his colleagues thinking about treating apneas electrically, sort of like how we use pacemakers to treat the heart. “We actually inserted fine wires into the hypoglossal nerve in humans, and found that we could

Exploradio Origins: New Discoveries in Treating Sleep Apnea

The Amish are an anachronism in modern America. They don’t own cars, they’re not on the grid, but researchers at the College of Wooster find that the Amish relationship with technology is more nuanced than it appears at first glance, and doesn’t always fit our stereotypes. In this week’s Exploradio, we look at the complexities of Amish life in the 21 st century.

Exploradio: Wooster Researchers Examine the Complexities of Amish Life in the 21st Century

To live and function, we know cells have to eat and reproduce. But, they also have to take out the trash. What seems like a simple chore to us is actually a matter of life or death for the cell, and drug designers are finding this useful in the fight against disease. “If you have, let's say, something toxic to the cell, the cell tries to eliminate that toxin by encapsulating it and getting rid of it,” said Dr. Jürgen Bosch . Cells form fatty acid bubbles around their garbage using a protein called ATG8. ATG8 has to connect, lock-and-key, with another protein, ATG3, in order to break down the trash in a process called “autophagy.” Bosch, a research scientist at Case Western Reserve University, designs drugs to try and mess up autophagy in disease cells. “The drug has to be made in such a way that it fits into that interface between the two proteins,” Bosch said. “Ten years ago, people in the industry thought it's impossible.” Bosch is designing drug molecules to stop ATG8 from fitting

Exploradio Origins: The Importance of Understanding How Cells Take Out the Trash

Additive Manufacturing, better known as 3-D printing, is one of the fastest growing technology sectors. It’s a printing process where plastic or metal parts are built-up layer by layer. In this week’s Exploradio, we look at where the industry is headed and how Northeast Ohio is building itself into the nation’s additive leader.

Exploradio: How Northeast Ohio Is Changing the Way America Makes Stuff

WKSU's exploration of science and innovation in Northeast Ohio.

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