Paul Tullis

longform journo for Businessweek, SciAm, Nat Geo, NYT et al. This site is unable to display some articles; all of them are at paultullis.net

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Sep. 15, 2020

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The brain-computer interface is coming

and we are so not ready for it If you were the type of geek, growing up, who enjoyed taking apart mechanical things and putting them back together again, who had your own corner of the garage or the basement filled with electronics and parts of…

Sep. 10, 2020

Bloomberg.com

How Fertilizer Is Making Climate Change Worse

The explosion that rocked Beirut last month, killing at least 190, was a grim echo of prior accidents caused by the explosive synthetic fertilizer ammonium nitrate. Tianjin, China, 2015: 173 dead. West, Texas, 2013: 15 dead. Toulouse, France, 2001:…

Aug. 24, 2020

Hakai Magazine

Hold the Salt: The Promise of Little Fresh Fishes

Tens of thousands of kilograms of white carp, rohu, stinging catfish, eel, red snapper, grouper, snakehead, gagata, bream—the list goes on—surround fish broker Ko Thar Gyi at the San Pya wholesale fish market in Myanmar’s colonial capital, Yangon.…

Aug. 5, 2020

The New Yorker

How a Potential Treatment for the Coronavirus Turned Up in a Scientist’s Freezer

In 1998, when the Dutch scientist Berend Bosch decided to make the study of coronaviruses his life’s work, the level of attention they garnered among medical researchers was such that the Ph.D. program he joined was in a department of veterinary…

Jun. 5, 2020

Bloomberg.com

Dutch Cooperation Made an ‘Intelligent Lockdown’ a Success

Across a small square from Amsterdam’s Mint Tower, where the Dutch Republic manufactured coins in the 17th century, begins Kalverstraat, one of the busiest shopping streets in the Netherlands. Dozens of major brands such as H&M, Nike, Swatch, and…

Apr. 23, 2020

Bloomberg.com

Using Dust and DNA to Trace Products All the Way Back to the Factory

Illustration: Benjamin Lemoine DNA analysis has long been the gold standard for establishing identity. Now there’s technology that may do the same for product provenance—as in, where exactly clothing, furniture, food or pretty much anything else…

Apr. 13, 2020

Town & Country

Are Psychedelics Our Most Promising New Treatments for Depression, Anxiety, and Addiction?

A doctor, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, and a clinical pharmacologist have come to the end of a road that leads up a wooded hill overlooking a valley on the Swiss-French border. Below, under blue skies and a few clouds of the type a child would draw,…

Mar. 28, 2020

Bloomberg.com

The Burning Problem of America’s Sugar Growers

Driving west on Florida Route 98 from Palm Beach, the smoke is visible before the warning signs. Near the Lion Country Safari (“Florida’s only drive-through safari”), there are, far across a vividly-green expanse, dark gray clouds climbing into the…

Dec. 9, 2019

The Atlantic

When Mental Illness Becomes a Jail Sentence

Derrick Clay walked into a restaurant in Colorado, one afternoon in January 2017, to get a bite to eat. His card was declined. Clay, who has been diagnosed with psychosis and probable bipolar disorder, grabbed another customer’s order—a hamburger and…

Nov. 19, 2019

Scientific American

GPS Is Easy to Hack, and the U.S. Has No Backup

On August 5, 2016, Cathay Pacific Flight 905 from Hong Kong was heading for an on-time arrival at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport when something unexpected occurred. The pilots radioed air traffic controllers and said they had lost GPS…

Oct. 16, 2019

MIT Technology Review

The US military is trying to read minds

In August, three graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University were crammed together in a small, windowless basement lab, using a jury-rigged 3D printer frame to zap a slice of mouse brain with electricity. The brain fragment, cut from the…

Aug. 28, 2019

Bloomberg.com

We’re Running Out of Helium, and Two Geologists Might Have a Fix

If Josh Bluett and his pal Thomas Abraham-James hadn’t run out of things to talk about during a road trip, they might never have read the six pages that changed their lives. Bluett and Abraham-James are Australian geologists and onetime housemates in…

Jun. 10, 2019

New York Times

To Map a Coral Reef, Peel Back the Seawater

Marjo Aho/The Nature Conservancy Coral reefs comprise just 1 percent of the ocean floor yet they are home to 25 percent of the world’s marine fish, a growing source of protein for people. But reefs are imperiled by a range of threats including…

Apr. 11, 2019

WIRED

Pete Buttigieg Revived South Bend With Tech. Up Next: America

In downtown South Bend, Indiana, there’s an ugly concrete building where people can pay their water bill in person. When Pete Buttigieg first became mayor, in 2012, at age 29, this fact drove him insane. “How the hell is it that we’re still…

Mar. 8, 2019

the Guardian

How the world got hooked on palm oil – podcast

Mar. 6, 2019

National Geographic

How the sapphire trade is driving lemurs toward extinction

AMBATONDRAZAKA, MADAGASCARIndris, at two feet tall the largest of Madagascar’s lemurs, are big sleepers. The primates awaken two or three hours after sunrise, forage for leaves high in the canopy during the day (amid frequent naps), and choose their…

Feb. 19, 2019

the Guardian

How the world got hooked on palm oil

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there grew a magical fruit. This fruit could be squeezed to produce a very special kind of oil that made cookies more healthy, soap more bubbly and crisps more crispy. The oil could even make lipstick…

Sep. 9, 2018

Scientific American

Despite Many Threats, Some Coral Reefs Are Thriving

RAROTONGA, COOK ISLANDS—Twenty-one degrees, 12 minutes south of the equator, 2,771 miles south-southeast of the southern tip of the island of Hawaii, 30 feet below 4-foot swells, Nicole Pedersen swims slowly, wearing a wetsuit, headband, and full…

Jul. 25, 2018

Bloomberg.com

The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan

Duke Buckner was enjoying his breakfast at the Renaissance Tel Aviv Hotel, looking out on the city marina, on the day that time stuttered. Buckner oversees marketing and business development for Microsemi Corp., an American communications and defense …

Jun. 19, 2018

Oceans Deeply

Sharp Fall in Australian Fish Stocks Stokes Fight Over Marine Reserves

A hotly debated study that found a big decline in fish populations over the past decade comes as the government proposes to open up some marine protected areas to recreational and commercial fishing. Australia’s management of its fisheries and marine …