Science Corner

Imagine that you are walking to your car after a particularly stressful day at work. Or perhaps instead, your day got off to a bad start with a crowded bus ride into the office. Do the experiences that we have during our workday affect our behavior and perhaps even influence our safety when commuting home? Can a difficult commute to the office undermine our ability to have a happy, healthy, and productive day at work?

Take a deep breath … now consider, for a moment, the chemical compounds that have filled your lungs. Depending on where you live and your immediate surroundings, you may have inhaled more than 1,000 particles. Can we forecast air quality to guide industry, policy, or the best time of day to go for a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway?

The more we know, the better we do. This has been proven true throughout history. As humans have continued to gain knowledge at a remarkable rate, today we enjoy life expectancies and a standard of living that were unimaginable 100 years ago. But exactly how did these advances take place? How have we been able to continue to gain knowledge and develop new technologies and medical interventions?

Most of us probably have been told at some point in our lives to “sleep on it” or to “get a good night’s sleep.” But have you ever wondered, perhaps a little annoyed: Why should I sleep on it? Or why do I need to sleep at all? It turns out that sleep is important for many different reasons — some of which you might never have dreamed of.

Summer in Southwest Virginia is full of sights, scents, and sounds we associate with our home. For example, you will likely hear the familiar, low, repetitive call of the American bullfrog. Unfortunately, the bullfrog songs that are a hallmark of our freshwater habitats in the eastern United States are a sign of trouble elsewhere.

Game theory, a branch of applied mathematics, has its origins in parlor games, but is widely used today in many disciplines such as economics and computer science. It is the systematic study of any rule-governed situation, where the outcome depends on the actions of multiple people. Examples range from simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Rock, Paper, Scissors all the way to mega-companies like Coke and Pepsi competing to sell their products.

Doing AI in the small is valuable to many people who do not have the means to use and benefit from Big Tech AI. It might also be safer if people do not have to share their data with Big Tech companies for the sake of building new AI models that benefit only a few. Miniaturizing AI can be about rural communities that do not have good broadband internet access or the latest personal devices.