After a campaign that avoided climate change like the plague, President Barack Obama gave a State of the Union speech that put climate change on center stage. Early in the speech he encouraged law makers to revisit cap-and-trade as a way of tackling emissions of greenhouse gases. “I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, [...]

It seems the future of 3-D printing is limited only by one’s imagination. The process is already used to build—layer by layer—jewelry, toys and a variety of prosthetics, with some predicting that additive fabrication of space station spare parts and even food isn’t far behind. Despite this promise, design flaws can greatly impact the quality [...]

It’s always nice to get the full recommended seven or nine hours of sleep every day. But life—and work—often gets in the way. And getting too little sleep can decrease attention and short-term memory and can also alter rational judgment—in addition to increasing the risk for some diseases and making it harder to lose weight. [...]

I saw an article in Time magazine a few weeks ago about a low-cost 3D printer. The machine  receives instructions from a digital computer file that instructs it to build things by depositing and fusing layers of a heated plastic. In 1983, I remember a Time magazine “Machine of the Year” cover that proclaimed: “The [...]