Starbase, located in Boca Chica, TX is getting a new upgrade called Starfactory – with a 100-million-dollar price tag and some incredibly ambitious goals – that's expected to be online this summer.

FIUTeach at Florida International University aims to reduce the shortage of math and science teachers in Miami-Dade County and beyond — while ensuring educators are subject matter experts. WLRN goes into one of South Florida's oldest high schools to see how the program is working.

The brain is a walking duck, an enchanted loom, a telegraph switchboard, a computer…

Many people believe that the human brain is a computer.  But that is only the latest in a long history of metaphors used to understand the brain.  These metaphors grew from whatever was the most advanced technology of the time.

The ancient Greeks believed that the brain worked like a water clock with the nerves funneling four fluids or humors (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood).  The Greeks, followed by the Romans, developed water-powered gears that allowed for elaborations beyond time keeping.  The water would open doors and windows to reveal figures hidden inside, perhaps suggesting the hidden actions of the brain.

Descartes was ahead of his time when he wrote in 1644 that the workings of the brain and organs be considered a “Machine… [with] the movements of a clock or other automaton from that of its counterweight and wheels ….” 

A California school district fights chronic absenteeism in kindergarten by helping parents decide whether their kid is too sick to go to school.

Art & Math in Three-Dimensions: This project and lesson takes it's inspiration from the three-dimensional Afrofuturistic quilted sculptures by African American artist Sanford Biggers. As Biggers has described, his quilt works, which he began making in 2012, allude to the highly de…

After years of delay, Boeing's Starliner is flying people for the first time with two NASA astronauts heading to the International Space Station. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The historian knows something about civil war — and moral responsibility in politics.

The short answer is that plants look green to us, because red light is the most useful wavelength for them. The longer answer lies in the details of photosynthesis…

China is aiming to become the first nation to return rock and dust from the lunar far side.

Florida universities and school districts are incentivizing college students to become teachers in the highest-need areas. In the WLRN series Role Call, we found these programs are "moving the needle, but only a very, very small amount."

Experts and educators are worried about students who miss big chunks of the school year, but a new NPR/Ipsos poll shows parents aren’t quite sure what it is.

Artists have been exploring the relationship between machine-made things and algorithms (code) for a very long time. French artist Marcel Duchamp coined the term ‘readymade’ to describe works of art he made from manufactured objects. Since then the term has been applied more generally to contemporary artworks.

By the end of the 19th century this term was used to describe manufactured as opposed to handmade objects. Traditional artificial intelligence or AI, often seen in manufacturing, uses tools and machines to do or make things. Twenty years after Duchamp left the art world to play chess computer scientist Alan Turing explored machine intelligence that was theoretically capable of playing chess.

There are concerns about how that move might impact schools.

When psychologist Lewis Terman launched his decades-long study of high-IQ children in 1921, he had a specific goal in mind: to prove that "gifted" people were born leaders, and superior in just about every way. Although his theory didn't pan out, Terman did kick off national interest in identifying and cultivating intellectually gifted children.Just over a century later, experts in science, education, and psychology are grappling with questions about how we define giftedness, who qualifies as gifted, how we should teach and treat gifted children, and where the limits of their talents lie.On this episode, we hear stories about the challenges of growing up gifted, how musical prodigies are made — and identified, and what a chess wunderkind has to teach us about the value of raw talent vs. experience.

The pandemic sparked an absenteeism crisis that U.S. schools are still battling. One school district in Livingtson, Calif., is seeing success with kindergarteners.

We need two ingredients for life to start on a planet: dry land and (fresh) water. Strictly, the water doesn't have to be fresh, but fresh water can only occur on dry land.

Researchers tested for bias in Facebook’s algorithm by purchasing ads promoting for-profit colleges and studying who saw them.

Joel Whitney's Flights: Radicals on the Run (O/R Books) is a wonderfully written text about a truly remarkable if also painfully elusive subject: artists

Every special education teacher makes a big impact — but Florida public schools will need an extra 2,500 of them for the upcoming academic year. WLRN looks at a federally funded program at the University of Central Florida that offers a free master's degree in special education in exchange for a teaching commitment.

Scientists have long studied how near-infrared light bounces off forests and grasslands, as a proxy for plant health. Now, an artist is using the same trick to turn the Joshua tree into an instrument.

Once the federal money expires, one Tulsa organization estimates its after-school program offerings will shrink from 450 to just 75. That's unless they can find outside funding.