Category Archives: Formats

Nicaragua defies canal protests

Nicaragua has great expectations for the Grand Canal, a US$50-billion, 5-year project to link its Caribbean and Pacific coasts with a 280-kilometre waterway. President Daniel Ortega and other supporters of the canal, who celebrated the start of construction on 22 December, say that it will generate much-needed income for residents of the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Continue reading Nicaragua defies canal protests

Building a New Economy on Soda Bottles and a 3D Printer

On a steep road on the outskirts of Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, a low buzz and plastic fumes emanate from a white house. A ribbed white paper tube snakes out of a window on the building, exhaling a light smoke which mixes with fumes from nearby open-air cooks and the sooty exhaust of rumbling, unmuffled bus engines. Inside, the tube is attached to a machine that’s gobbling plastic flakes—which can come from used drink bottles—through a funnel also made from a plastic drink bottle. At the other end of the machine, a spinning wheel draws out the fresh-melted polymer into a black filament just three millimeters wide and value hundreds of times what it was worth in in bottle form. Continue reading Building a New Economy on Soda Bottles and a 3D Printer

A preventable cancer

I reported and wrote an infographic on the epidemiology of liver cancer. It was a good growing experience to work with a designer and an editor on a piece of visual, data-oriented journalism. I learned a lot and ended up wanting to experiment more with conveying data visually, with words and stories as a complement, rather than the other way around. I’m looking forward to the next opportunity.

To best see the visual elements of the infographic, I recommend checking out the PDF below rather than the HTML web version.

First published by Nature Outlook: [html] [pdf].