2014 archives

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November 30, 2014 by Michael Behar

Men’s Fitness | December 2014

Muscle Matrix ThumbnailHarness the Power of Your Muscle Matrix Download PDF

Want huge biceps, six-pack abs, and perfect pecs? Then it’s time to rethink everything you think you know about muscle building. Because new evidence suggests that it’s not actually your muscles but your connective tissue—the muscle “matrix” that holds your muscles together—that triggers strength and size. The good news? You can exercise it, too.

Picture a medieval torture rack for Smurfs. The device, called a uniaxial tensile tester, is about the size of a shoebox. With long tweezers, a doctoral researcher at the UC Davis Functional Molecular Biology Lab plucks a freshly grown, two-week- old anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, from an incubator and clamps the ends to anchors on the tensile tester. A USB cable then hooks it to a laptop, allowing the researcher to tweak how hard and fast the tendon gets yanked, and for how long— hours, sometimes days. Continue reading →

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November 1, 2014 by Michael Behar

SKI | NOVEMBER 2014

The Enforcer ThumbnailThe Enforcer Download PDF

Mt. Baker general manager Duncan Howat wants you to enjoy the überdeep backcountry powder his resort? is famous for—but only if you do so by his rules. 

The powder arrived late to Mt. Baker Ski Area last season. Clinging to the craggy slopes of the North Cascades in Washington State, the 1,000-acre resort—founded in 1953 and locally owned and operated—is just 50 miles from the sea. When moisture-laden storms barrel off the Pacific Ocean, they slam headlong into Baker, dropping the goods. During the 1998–1999 season, Baker recorded 1,140 inches of snow, the world record for a single winter. That was when local riders wouldn’t even look at their boards unless overnight totals had topped a foot. It was so deep that employees had to dig trenches beneath lifts to prevent the chairs from running aground. Continue reading →

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June 9, 2014 by Michael Behar

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK | JUNE 9, 2014

SustainX ThumbnailIs Renewable Energy Ready for Takeoff? Download PDF SustainX Thumbnail

SustainX and its temperature-stabilizing foam are bringing competitively priced storage for renewable energy closer.

The first thing Dax Kepshire shows a visitor to SustainX is foam. When he flips a switch on a 10-foot-tall assemblage of pneumatic tubes and mesh screens, the machine starts spewing a creamy white goo that resembles soft- serve ice cream into a 300-gallon plastic tub. In a few minutes the foam is 3 feet deep, and Kepshire plunges his hand in. “It’s completely nontoxic,” he says, and derived from an industrial foaming agent found in shampoo and carwash soap. The seven-year-old company is betting the substance can solve the biggest challenge for renewable energy: how to store it. Continue reading →

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June 3, 2014 by Michael Behar

BEHIND THE COVER STORY | MAY 26, 2014

Trek Medicine[Originally published at The 6th Floor – Eavesdropping on the Times Magazine, March 26, 2014]

What got you interested in the subject of electronic devices being implanted into humans?
I read a lot of medical journals like Nature and Science. For probably a year, I had been seeing various stories about using the nervous system to cure disease. There has been a lot of work looking at the nervous system and the immune system to deal with cancer. These were independent researchers. I’d see a study here and a study there, and nothing really warranted a feature story. I collected clips over at least a year. Last fall, I saw a story in Nature about GlaxoSmithKline launching a bioelectronics division. Big Pharma is very conservative in business, in technology. They have to be. It is the nature of their business. To see them take an interest in a very science-fictiony or way-out project made me think, “Huh, there is more to this than I know.” They planned an invite-only conference to get all of these researchers I had been following together in one place. Continue reading →

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June 3, 2014 by Michael Behar

The New York Times Magazine | May 25, 2014

Body Hackers ThumbnailInvasion of the Body Hackers Download PDF

Can the body be programmed to fight disease with devices instead of drugs? Welcome to the brave new world of bioelectronics. 

One morning in May 1998, Kevin Tracey converted a room in his lab at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., into a makeshift operating theater and then prepped his patient — a rat — for surgery. A neurosurgeon, and also Feinstein Institute’s president, Tracey had spent more than a decade searching for a link between nerves and the immune system. His work led him to hypothesize that stimulating the vagus nerve with electricity would alleviate harmful inflammation. “The vagus nerve is behind the artery where you feel your pulse,” he told me recently, pressing his right index finger to his neck. Continue reading →

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April 14, 2014 by Michael Behar

TRADER WOES | MARCH 18, 2004

Cookie Butter

[Originally published at Outsideonline.com, March 18, 2014]

Last month, on Valentine’s Day, Trader Joe’s held the grand opening for its first store in Boulder, Colorado, where I live. In fact, there were previously no stores anywhere in Colorado, and residents had long been begging the grocer to locate here via online petitions and Facebook fan pages. In early 2012, inklings emerged that TJ’s was eyeing potential Colorado sites, including my town. The rumors headlined Boulder’s Daily Camera, which would report on the $11-billion chain in some 70-plus articles over the next two years. Continue reading →