A  technique developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with Dow and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, is providing atomic-resolution details about magnesium chloride, a material involved…

The first message sent by Morse code’s dots and dashes across a long distance traveled from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore on Friday, May 24, 1844—175 years ago. It signaled the first time in human history that complex thoughts could be communicated at long distances almost instantaneously. Until…

CEOs are stepping forward to confront public policy issues that often extend beyond their core business, in part at the urging of their employees, write Caroline Kaeb and David Scheffer in this opinion piece. Kaeb is co-chair of the Business and Human Rights Pillar and a senior fellow of the…

A frog the size of a fingernail. A poncho-clad farmer leading his mule. A tree, some intertwining leaves, a silhouetted figure holding a pot. Such logos are stamped on labels of coffee, cocoa, mangoes, jeans, and myriad other products, certifying that the object for sale is in some way “sustainable…

Ryan Tillman-French sat at his seventh-floor desk early on a Thursday morning, the skyscrapers of downtown Boston crowding the windows behind him. On a laptop in the nearly empty office, he worked on code for a web page he was developing for his employer, the learning materials company Houghton…

My favorite part of a recent podcast with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits (Avery, 2018), was the last five minutes, when he talked about a potential downside of good habits. When we decide to improve and create a new practice with the right cues and rewards, we form a new habit. But habits can…

At James Lick High School the slate-gray Chromebooks are ubiquitous. Rolling cabinets stocked with dozens of the laptops sit in classrooms where teachers assign them to students for everything from researching hereditary DNA to writing essays. In this majority-Latino school of 1,100 students, 84…

About 10 years ago, software testing was perceived as the only possible quality assurance (QA) measure for software, according to the World Quality Report 2018–2019. However, QA has since outstepped these boundaries. The QA process now implies that all stakeholders have a direct interest in…

Once students learn how to sound out words, reading is easy. They can speak the words they see. But whether they understand them is a different question entirely. Reading comprehension is complicated. Teachers, though, can help students learn concrete skills to become better readers. One way is by…

In August 2011, a can of Great Value peas joined the nonperishables in my pantry, one of several panic purchases as Hurricane Irene barreled toward my home on the northeast U.S. coast. But the emergency passed, and the can, with its unassuming blue-on-white outline font, remains on my shelf seven…

Historically, conventional wisdom among business managers was that the higher the quality, the higher the cost. This perception still holds true today among a few business managers. Common sense also tells us the same thing, i.e., to create higher quality products or services, organizations will…

Compliance to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations has come a long way in the past 30 years. Here are the main changes. Have they affected your business? 1988: Food and Drug Administration ActOfficially establishes the FDA as an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services…

I recently wrote an article about innovation during 2018, and in it I made some disparaging remarks about Apple, which may or may not have caused it to lose a tremendous amount of market capitalization. Or perhaps the stock was overvalued, and Apple has become more interested in margin than in…

We tied up last year in a neat little bow, talking about how stories define ourselves and our work; waste is waste, no matter your political leanings; and putting numbers from the news in context. “The Gift of Being Small” This article by Quality Digest’s Taran March wonderfully illustrates how we…

When graduate student Atis Degro got an email about a George Mason University course in resilience last year, he had to look up what that meant. He was also curious about the credential being offered for successfully completing the course: not a conventional degree or a certificate, but a “badge…

Since their invention more than 100 years ago, airplanes have been moved through the air by the spinning surfaces of propellers or turbines. But watching science fiction movies like the Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Back to the Future series, I imagined that the propulsion systems of the future…

A giant engine in a factory fails. Concerned, the factory owners call in technicians, who arrive with bulging toolkits. None of them can work out what the problem is. The issue persists. One day, an old man shows up who’s been fixing engines his whole life. After inspecting it for a minute, he…

The ability to program computers is crucial to almost all modern scientific experiments, which often involve extremely complex calculations and massive amounts of data. However, scientists typically have not been formally trained in science-specific programming to develop customized computational…

To most of us, the phrase “work that matters” infers job satisfaction. The outcome is lower stress, lower turnover, and higher productivity—in business, a win-win for employees, customers, and shareholders. The logic is infallible. So, I ask you, why is there such a gap between the theory and the…

To ask a good question requires two things: insight and gumption. The root of all worthy questions is a desire to fill in a gap in your understanding of something. The insight in good questions comes from seeing that gap, exploring its edges, and forming a question that can serve as an invitation…

This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine. Back in the 1990s, when U.S. banks started installing automated teller machines in a big way, the human tellers who worked in those banks seemed to be facing rapid obsolescence. If machines could hand out cash and accept deposits on their…

It finally came to me last week. For more than a decade I’ve been working with corporations, trying to help them accelerate their ability to generate new, interesting ideas to market as viable products and services. In some instances we’ve been successful, and in other instances there were…

One of the highlights on our calendar each year is the first Friday in October, which is Manufacturing Day here in the United States. This event offers us the perfect opportunity to celebrate the centrality of manufacturing as a driver of the economy, innovation, automation, education, and lots…

Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) career outreach programs play a pivotal role in shaping the capabilities and makeup of the future workforce. Generally speaking, “STEM outreach” involves organizing events, both in and out of school, where we can encourage and inspire young people to…

Do you know the one thing you can do to light the fire of motivation, energy, creativity, and self-propelled action in your employees? The discovery of gold in Northern California lit off a tidal wave of prospectors, who came by the thousands to find their share of wealth. A very small number…