Paul Tullis

longform journo for Businessweek, SciAm, et al. tel/WhatsApp+31 (0)6 5191 7077

Apr 23, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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 …

Jun 8, 2018

Saving Caribbean Coral Reef With A High-Tech Hand

Mapping coral reefs from up high - Carnegie Airborne Observatory Carnegie Airborne Observatory researchers map coral reefs in Caribbean to aid with post-hurricane reconstruction. ST. CROIX — The Carnegie Airborne Observatory spent 16 days flying over …

May 23, 2018

Don't Write Coral Reefs' Obituary Yet

Despite myriad threats, some coral reefs are rebounding. On location in Rarotonga with the UCSD team trying to figure out why.

May 18, 2018

Pacific Standard

'Completely Weird': How a Mantis Shrimp's Unique Vision System Is Inspiring Innovation

"Extraordinary." "Pretty strange." "Completely weird." These are the professional assessments of the vision system of the seabed-dwelling mantis shrimp from Viktor Gruev, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of …

May 3, 2018

How Oil Industry Robots Can Help Scientists Explore the Deep Sea

Researchers often can’t afford to send remotely operated vehicles to the far reaches of the ocean. Now they’re collaborating with business to take advantage of discoveries made by ROVs deployed by oil and gas companies. A cusk eel hides under a black …

Apr 11, 2018

What’s Next: Swarms of AI-Powered Robotic Microscopes to Study Plankton

There’s just one bottleneck to better real-time data about the organisms at the base of the ocean food chain – the artificial intelligence needed to process all of it. In recent predictions of technologies that could change the world in five years, …

Mar 21, 2018

The Robot That Is Helping Unravel the Mystery of Ocean Microbes

Ocean microbes are key to global carbon and oxygen cycles, but they aren’t well studied due to challenges observing them at the right time and place. Now researchers have developed a new autonomous robot and sampling device that could help crack the …