Beyond the Microchip

“Words are the new weapons, satellites the new artillery.”

Jonathan Pryce’s villain Elliot Carver says to James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies right before he manipulates a GPS signal to make a British destroyer begin a confrontation with the Chinese military, may seem like the realm of pop culture; the idea of manipulating GPS signals and disrupting communications has long been a staple of spy thrillers like our favorite James Bond f...

“Words are the new weapons, satellites the new artillery.”

Jonathan Pryce’s villain Elliot Carver says to James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies right before he manipulates a GPS signal to make a British destroyer begin a confrontation with the Chinese military, may seem like the realm of pop culture; the idea of manipulating GPS signals and disrupting communications has long been a staple of spy thrillers like our favorite James Bond f...

It’s no secret the world turns. Its 24-hour rotation on its axis gives us the definition of a day. Our moon, recently eclipsed in North America, orbits around us. We, in turn, orbit around our sun along with the other planets, and our entire solar system orbits around the Milky Way galaxy. These cosmic revolutions make up the foundation of our existence.

But whether we realize it or not, there is another set of revolutions happenin...

Picture a world where the hum of electricity permeates every aspect of our lives, from the devices we hold in our hands to the vehicles that transport us across vast distances. This is the world of the electrification of everything, a paradigm shift that promises to reshape our relationship with energy and power.

As once analog and unpowered items are augmented with electrical systems, we find ourselves at the precipice of a new er...

“Third place”. The term originated in a 1989 book written by sociologist Ray Oldenberg. It refers to a place separate from Work or Home where humans can facilitate social interaction. The need for Third Places has grown and was extremely exacerbated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Like many other things, the pandemic accelerated increasing trends: loneliness and obesity.  

According to the World Health Organization: “High-quality ...

COVID-19 impacted the world. In December of 2019 news reports out of Wuhan, the capital of Central China's Hubei province, detailed the emergence of an atypical pneumonia-like illness that did not respond well to standard treatments. By January 2020 world health officials had identified the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. By February 2020 the World Health Organization had declared the 2019 Novel Coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergen...

Water is the most precious substance on earth and a primary building block of life. Humans can’t live more than a few days without it. Yet in order to grow, cultivate, process, and transport our food, we waste a tremendous amount of it. So much so that we need to pull more of it out of the ground just to satisfy our agricultural needs, making matters worse. A report in the June 2023 issue of Geophysical Research Letters indicates t...

Asthma is a global phenomenon. According to the World Health Organization, Asthma affected an estimated 262 million people in 2019.  In the United States alone, the Centers for Disease Control estimates there are over 4.6 million children under the age of 18 with Asthma.

According to the Global Asthma Report in 2022, Asthma is ""well controlled"" in nearly 2/3rds of adults. That number drops below 45% in children aged 5-14.

While i...

The old parable of the country kid moving to the big city and leaving the farm behind is a timeless yarn of youth, ambition, and Hope. In recent years, that trope has become a reality. The number of farmers in the United States alone has been steadily dropping. The percentage of first-generation farmers is close to 78%. It can be a tough business. Climate cycles are becoming unpredictable and, as in many industries, one just can't ...

Severe Storms. Wildfires. Floods. According to Statista, there were 421 natural disaster events recorded worldwide in 2022. Among the most damaging are tropical cyclones, what the World Health Organization would refer to as typhoons or hurricanes. As damaging as the wind can be, the greatest damage to life and property is not from the wind, but from secondary events such as storm surges, flooding, landslides, and tornadoes.

To co...

When you sit down to eat your next meal, think about how your food got in front of you. Did you grow it yourself or did you buy it from someone? If the latter, was it from a restaurant or a store? Do you ever wonder how it gets from the farm to your plate?

Whether you are a vegan or a die-hard carnivore, your food comes from a farm somewhere. It needs to be grown, harvested, processed, and transported to a place where it is then pr...

One of the few things every human on this planet, and every other living thing for that matter, shares is the fact that everything gets 1,440 minutes per day. Our planet makes one rotation on its axis, the sun comes up, the sun goes down and we start the dance all over again. Part of the human experience is how we spend that time.

Multiple sources, including the Mayo Clinic and the World Health Organization, suggest humans need 7-1...

Picture an average night at home. You’re sitting on the couch, remote in hand, maybe with a beverage by your side. You use your remote to navigate through the menu of your favorite streaming platform to select an episode of your favorite TV show. You pause to give a command to your smart speaker to shut off the music you were playing before sitting down. As you watch the show, you recognize an actor you like, but you can’t remember...

Welcome to Beyond the Microchip

So much of our daily lives are controlled or influenced by electronics. We rely on GPS to direct us, we hit "brew" on our coffee machines for our mornin' cup of Joe, we wave our hands over a sensor to get running water from a faucet and press a button to open our garage doors. 

But do we really know what's going on inside? Are we aware of the universe of technology and calculations going on right und...