New York Times - You’re in a Facebook group for your dorm. Your mom has one, too. For many parents, the groups are a source of support, community and identity. Dee Dee Becker is the administrator for Virginia Tech’s parents Facebook group, which has more than 16,000 members, making it one of the largest groups of its kind on the platform. Ms. Becker estimated that she devotes 40 hours a week overseeing the group.

Wall Street Journal - Are online wine courses worth your time? While the above offerings are available for free, some online courses can be rather pricey. For instance, Napa Valley Wine Academy conducts courses that cost hundreds of dollars, including a “Napa Valley Wine Expert” certification for $395. Since that was more than my last round-trip ticket from New York to San Francisco, I enrolled instead in “Get Wine-Smart” (udemy.com), taught by John Boyer, a geography professor at Virginia Tech. The course, from online-learning platform Udemy, cost me a mere $12.- College of Natural Resources and Environment

Washington Post - GWU aims to get smaller and better. Will that mean cuts to faculty and financial aid? Schools throughout the country are grappling with a volatile market. Public Virginia Tech, with a surprise overflow of more than 1,000 freshmen, turned hotels into makeshift dormitories this summer to squeeze them in. But private Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, Ithaca College in New York and numerous others fell short of targets.

Washington Post - This water bottle knows how much you’ve had to drink — and it tells your phone He used the cash to buy his first stocks, in General Motors and Coca-Cola. (I own Coca-Cola shares.) Perrelli graduated from Virginia Tech in 1995 with a degree in finance, and he has had several hits and a few misses in a quarter-century of investing. - Pamplin College of Business

POLITICO -  Morning Transportation: Self driving into the future  Ohio and Virginia were the first to announce they’ve been awarded DOT grants funding “demonstration projects that test the safe integration of automated driving systems." The DriveOhio program got $7.5 million to test self-driving cars on rural roads. And Virginia Tech Transportation Institute got two grants that size, one of which will develop guidelines for the trucking industry. DOT told Congress about the grants on Tuesday and will announce them publicly on Sept. 18.

NPR's On Point - WBUR Boston: Is there such a thing as too much innovation? Lee Vinsel, historian of technology, and professor of science and technology studies at Virginia Tech. (@STS_News) (@The_Maintainers) This story was picked up by NPR affiliates across the county. - College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences

Smithsonian - Ancient worm died inits tracks, shedding light on animal movement “This discovery shows that segmented and mobile animals evolved by 550 million years ago,” Shuhai Xiao of Virginia Tech, co-author of the study in Nature, says. “Mobility made it possible for animals to make an unmistakable footprint on Earth, both literally and metaphorically. Those are the kind of features you find in a group of animals called bilaterans. This group includes us humans and most animals. Animals and particularly humans are movers and shakers on Earth. Their ability to shape the face of the planet is ultimately tied to the origin of animal motility.” Also picked up by Sputnik and Cosmos. - College of Science

Scientific American - Even if injection of fracking wastewater stops, quakes won’t Ryan Pollyea, a hydrogeologist and assistant professor at Virginia Tech, wanted to see if differences in density between the brackish wastewater fluids and the water naturally residing in the basement could play a role in letting the wastewater penetrate what is a comparatively impermeable layer of rock. - College of Science

Daily Mail - YouTube is promoting bogus cancer cure videos and running ads for major brands and universities before they play, investigation finds Researchers from Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the U.S. asked 19 patients with taste and smell disturbances to take 250mg of lactoferrin three times a day for 30 days.

Parents via Yahoo News - Are video games really to blame for America's gun problem? As James Ivory, Ph.D., the director of research in communication at Virginia Tech points out: "We need to be mindful that while there may be a mental health factor in some violent crimes, mental health challenges are common in society and most people who suffer from mental illness are not committing violent crimes." - College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences

Women’s Health via Yahoo Lifestyle - These 'granny pods' will allow your grandma to live in a high-tech cottage in your backyard  Allow us to introduce you to the "Granny Pod." Also known as the MEDCottage, the tiny home is essentially a portable hospital room designed by a Blacksburg, VA company, with help from Virginia Tech. Think of it as sort of a guest house with lots of high-tech medical extras. MEDCottages are pre-fabricated and designed to be installed in the backyard behind the main home (zoning laws permitting, of course).

Digital Trends - In the battle between AMD and Intel, which processors are more secure? It also pointed to a Virginia Tech study from 2019 that highlighted how an average of just 5.5 percent of discovered vulnerabilities were actively utilized in the wild. 

Inverse - The mental cost of emotional labor There are two strategies that employees utilize to regulate their emotions, and in turn, perform emotional labor. These include “individual deep acting” and “individual surface acting.” William Becker, Ph.D., a Virginia Tech professor who’s studied emotional labor explains to me that surface acting goes back to the idea of “fake it ‘til you make it.” It’s suppressing your emotions and outwardly projecting something else, even if you haven’t changed what you feel. - Pamplin College of Business