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
Category Archives: Outlets
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.
Geologists Solve Mystery of Siberian Crater
In July, a helicopter pilot flying over arctic Russia’s Yamal Peninsula noticed an odd sight: a roughly 100-foot-wide crater in the permafrost. Images of the crater went viral online, sparking theories of its formation: Was it a meteorite? A missile strike? A botched alien landing?
Continue reading Geologists Solve Mystery of Siberian Crater
Barcelona’s Smart City Ecosystem
Gardeners making their rounds through Barcelona’s Parc del Centre del Poblenou these days are as likely to carry tablets as trowels. The city recently moved 178 of its irrigation points to an Internet-controlled system. While it is handy to manage watering at the keyboard instead of turning a knob on a pipe, much of the advantage is in the data that the new system sends back to a central software system the city has built. Continue reading Barcelona’s Smart City Ecosystem