After a two-year experiment, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, in conjunction with Samsung, have written a concept paper in the journal Angewandte Chemie explaining that they think it's possible to "generate potentially thousands of odors, at will, in a compact device small enough to fit on the back of your TV." To which we say: Gross. But here's how Sungho Jin, a world-renowned materials expert at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, described his invention: "For example, if people are eating pizza, the viewer smells pizza coming from a TV or cell phone. ... Read More
‘If a Tree Falls’ Revisits the Earth Liberation Front
September 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The trajectory of Daniel McGowan's life is a familiar one: A young man from a conventional background finds meaning in a cause greater than himself. Thanks in part to overreaction by the authorities, he gradually becomes radicalized, dedicating himself to violent resistance — a course of action that grabs attention but ultimately backfires on him and his movement. An Islamic radical? White supremacist? Perhaps an anti-globalization anarchist? None of the above. McGowan was one of the key figures in the eco-terrorism of the 1990s, a man who used arson as a weapon in the fight to ... Read More
Rescuing the Rural Edge — It Takes a Village
September 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Where suburbia merges into countryside typically looks peaceful enough, with lawns giving way to forests and fields. But in most places, this is a zone of conflict and dysfunction. The steady loss of farmland and natural habitat to sprawl-pattern development endangers food supplies and other resources, as well as the health, wealth and survival prospects of individuals and even whole communities. Take California's fifth-largest city, Fresno, located in one of the most productive areas on Earth, the San Joaquin Valley. Agriculture is the principal industry in Fresno County — generating ... Read More
9/11 Memorial: Ground Zero as Dark Tourist Site
September 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
New York's ground zero, where the World Trade Center's Twin Towers once stood, is a place of what was and what will be. Ten years after terrorists flew planes into the buildings, the memories of what had been are fading into the dust of time and new construction. Chaos mixes with normality, pilings are driven into the ground, steel clatters as new structures rise. Bicyclists whiz past briefcase-toting commuters, both groups oblivious to curious onlookers straining to see through slits in the construction fences. These are the ground zero pilgrims, numbering daily in the thousands, many ... Read More
Old Money Caught in the Great Redistribution
September 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Older Americans are bearing the brunt of the economic downturn, the most severe since the Great Depression, economists say. Between mid-2007 and early 2009, when stocks and real estate values collapsed to their lowest point, U.S. households aged 60-69 experienced a decline in net worth of $312,000, on average, compared to an average decline of $177,000 for households overall. That's according to "Intergenerational Redistribution in the Great Recession," a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research. In a deep recession, households approaching the end of their life cycle (there's a ... Read More
The Greening of Angela Merkel
August 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Before Japan's Fukushima disaster, in any German debate on nuclear power, Chancellor Angela Merkel played the role of a cautious and conservative mother hen. We may not like it, she said, but nuclear energy is easy on the climate, and a national shift to solar and wind power would need a long and sturdy "bridge technology." A trained physicist, she seemed to speak from professional prudence. After Fukushima, she changed her mind with dizzying speed. The results are well known: German nuclear plants will go dark by 2022, and the nation will steer a hard course for renewable power by working ... Read More
Humayun Finding Medical Advances in Plain Sight
August 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
By the standards of the unsexy world of university research scientists, Mark Humayun is something of a media darling. By his count, he's been interviewed more than 500 times, popping up on 20/20 with Barbara Walters, in the pages of Popular Mechanics and onstage with Stevie Wonder. It's always about the same thing — his amazing invention. Humayun is the chief researcher behind the world's first commercially available artificial retina, a breakthrough that literally helps the blind see. The artificial retina — technically, a retinal prosthesis — is the culmination of nearly 20 years ... Read More
Profile: Reddy Stayed Steady During Gulf Oil Spill
August 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Last November, a half year after the BP oil spill, as Christopher Reddy sat in a Mobile, Ala., restaurant, he overheard a customer at a nearby table ask a friend if he would order fish. "The other customer said, 'No, thanks, I don't like my fish with a side order of cancer.'" Reddy, a marine chemist, pondered telling them that scientific data from the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies indicate that eating fish from the Gulf of Mexico after the April 20, 2010, spill wasn't dangerous. "But I had a failure of nerve. I wish I had spoken to them." He increasingly ... Read More
