Health monitors to measure heart rate and steps per day are getting smaller and smaller, and cheaper and cheaper. Soon, researchers say, they’ll be the size of a band-aid, flexible, and disposable. Plus, they’ll measure chemicals in sweat that could detect stress, fatigue, or even heart or liver failure. My latest article, on new nanotechnology …
Read more “A Fitbit in a band-aid”
This is the most intense congregation of animals I’ve ever seen. I have a piece out about these salmon today in The Common Online: Alaskan Baselines.
There’s something special about seeking out nature in the unforgiving seasons. In memory of winter, now that spring has at last stolen over the landscape, I thought I’d share this nature notebook entry from the last days of December. The mosses were bright green in the brief melt, taking advantage of warming. Among them I …
Latest article in the Boston Globe: Eric Schmidt, executive chair of Google, and his wife, Wendy, own the only privately-owned oceanographic research vessel on the sea, the R/V Falkor. They provide grants for ocean scientists worldwide to do deep-ocean mapping and pure oceanographic research from on board. Article Most excitingly, in my opinion, they’re now …
Read more “Diving to the sea bottom”
Frogs. They’re familiar and otherworldly, slimy and charming, the kind of odd liminal animal that spurs the imagination. Their voices range from the brute croak of the bullfrog to the fairy-sweet, bell-like chorus of the spring peeper. Our complex relationship with frogs shows up even in our childhood in the deeper meanings of the well-known …
Read more “The loss of the frog prince”