Category Archives: Technology

Marine Biology Breakthroughs: I Cover the Waterfront

Photo of coral, goldies and and two divers
Photo by Derek Keats.

In honor of World Oceans Day (June 8), here’s my recent article on some of the remarkable discoveries made by marine biologists over the past few years. From clearing up the murky “lost years” of juvenile turtles to further solidifying our understanding of a jellyfish’s final fate, these delvers of the deep have shrunk what Shakespeare called “the vasty deep” to something a bit more fathomable but no less amazing. Find out more as I take a deep dive into …

10 Recent Breakthroughs in Marine Biology

Color-changing Ice Cream: It’s All About That Base (and Acid)

OK, so that’s not color-changing ice cream. It’s a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich. So sue me.

It’s said that we eat first with our eyes. It’s also said that there’s nothing new under the sun. There are a lot of sayings, is my point, but this isn’t an article about that. It’s an article about color-changing food.

“But wait,” I hear some of you saying. “Food already changes color. How do you think we get brown bananas?” To which I reply that nobody likes a smart aleck. Or something about “out of the mouths of babes,” assuming you’re a babe. Because you’re not far off from some of the ways that food scientists are using to take color-changing foods to the next level, particularly in the frozen food aisle.

How Color-changing Ice Cream Works

Coming to Grips with the Impalement Arts

A woman fastened to a spinning wheel has knives thrown at her.
The Wheel of Death: It’s a living. Photo by Ellin Beltz.

No one can say when people first started throwing knives, but I’m willing to bet that it was the result of boredom, desperation or an ill-thought-out dare.  How we got from there to the Wheel of Death involves a journey from Africa, through the Wild West shows and circuses of the 1800s, and finally to our own  backyards.

Knives hardly sail through the air like arrows, but throwing them is not a difficult as it might seem. So grab your weapon of choice and join me as I explain …

How Knife Throwing Works

Medical Hypothermia: You Should Put Some Ice on That

Photo of small cooler and ice packs by Antonín Ryska.
Not exactly what I meant. Photo by Antonín Ryska.

Medical research over the past 70 years has shown how the careful chilling of patients can aid resuscitation, save lives and protect neurological function. Most recently, doctors have begun exploring how therapeutic hypothermia can improve patient outcomes in cases ranging from stroke to heart attacks, respiratory problems and injuries to the brain and spinal cord.

By staving off the destructive chain of events that begins when blood and oxygen stop flowing, this treatment also pushes back the customary timeline of brain death. As new, more radical procedures promise to push it back further still, we have to wonder …

How Therapeutic Hypothermia Works

The Topsy-Turvy World of Trendspotting

Poster of Alexander Trend forecasters project everything from staffing and hiring needs to next year’s “it” color. Through a combination of instinct, experience, statistical modeling and not a little bit of finger-crossing, they tell clients where best to place their billion-dollar bets. Even granting the occasional self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s never been an easy gig, and the consequences of failure can be ruinous.

Today, big data is changing the field, providing unprecedented amounts of information even as it churns out predictive algorithms no one quite understands. In this article, I take a look at the past and future of this prognosticative trade and examine …

How Trend Forecasters Work