Articles | Michael Behar | Writer & Editor | Boulder, Colorado

Air & Space | September 2016

Drones in a Busy Sky Download PDF

Can technology protect airplanes from the new threat?

It’s exactly 3:45 A.M. on a blustery and unseasonably cold Tuesday morning in May when an armed military guard wearing a bulletproof vest waves me through the west entrance of Edwards Air Force Base. On a typical weekday at this hour, almost everyone here would be asleep. But this isn’t a typical weekday. I’m in a briefing room with some two dozen researchers—mostly aerospace and computer software engineers, along with three Air Force pilots certified to fly drones—at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, which is located on this Southern California military base. We’re guzzling coffee and chomping doughnuts while Dan Sternberg, a NASA operations engineer and former F/A-18 Hornet test pilot, leads the meeting, ticking through the day’s flight plan. Continue reading →

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February 17, 2016 by Michael Behar

Men’s Fitness | March 2016

You’re Not Eating Nearly Enough Protein. Period. Download PDF

We all know protein is the single most important building block of muscle growth. But, amazingly, science is only now discovering exactly how much protein we should be getting and—just as important—when we should be getting it.

A small plastic pouch filled with dark brown, organic matter arrived at my doorstep today. No, I didn’t immediately bolt down the stairs in hot pursuit of some teenagers. Instead, I took a closer look and found that the bag actually contained something else entirely: dead crickets. Continue reading →

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February 17, 2016 by Michael Behar

Men’s Fitness | December 2015

Killer in the Kitchen? Download PDF

Meat causes cancer, at least according to a shocking report from the World Health Organization. But there’s one big problem with that—our muscles argue otherwise.

The founding father of modern dietary science was a German chemist named Carl von Voit who loved to dispense advice on how to build big muscles. His favorite maxim: “Flesh makes flesh.” In the mid-1800s, physician von Voit made discoveries that led to what every bodybuilder now knows: Consume animal protein, or “flesh,” and your muscles grow. To the recent World Health Organization (WHO) report villainizing red meat, von Voit would have declared bullshit. (That’s quatsch in German.) And his outrage would’ve been justified. Continue reading →

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June 4, 2015 by Michael Behar

Outside | May 2015

Cloud Hoppers Download PDF

Thanks in part to advances in wing technology, a few pioneering paragliders are smashing the limits by completing long-distance flights that were once thought impossible. Last summer, high-fliers Will Gadd and Gavin McClurg pulled off one of the most ambitious trips ever attempted: 385 miles down the jagged, frozen, potentially deadly spine of the Canadian Rockies.

It’s shortly after five on the evening of August 1, 2014, and the winds on Mount Robson are calm, the sky is sapphire, and the sun is blazing, pushing temperatures to a near record 83 degrees. Robson—at 12,972 feet the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies—is so far north that darkness won’t fall here for several hours.

Suddenly, a red streak flits past the summit. Next, an orange blip loops into view. They’re paragliders, two of them, waltzing with the mountain, which looks like a Giza pyramid clad in ice. For nearly an hour, Will Gadd and Gavin McClurg soar like lazy raptors. Continue reading →

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February 3, 2015 by Michael Behar

ISLANDS | FEBRUARY 2015

Unplugged Maui Download PDF

Maui is many things, but on its quietest coastline there is something most visits lack: pure aloha.

For more than three decades my parents have wintered on Maui. In that time they’ve witnessed their once tiny community of Kaanapali transform. Traffic lights, strip malls, construction — what surrounds them today isn’t what originally brought them to the island. And it isn’t what attracted my wife, son and me here for a two-week visit. Continue reading →

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January 20, 2015 by Michael Behar

TakePart | January 2015

Ritalin vs. Recess Download PDF

Are drugs really the answer to the ADHD epidemic?

When Emma was just six months old, her parents, Kate and Jeff, began to suspect she was different from other infants. At mealtimes, Emma, their first child, would take two bites, and then her attention would wander. It took cajoling to get her to eat. As Emma got older, her peripatetic focus became evident in everything she did. “She wasn’t engaged with you or the activity,” Kate said. “She was off in her own world.” Shortly before Emma turned four, her preschool teacher informed Kate and Jeff, who live in San Francisco, that their daughter couldn’t follow directions or snap to attention when called upon. In 2009, Kate and Jeff met with a pediatrician and a child psychologist to discuss the issue. The experts arrived at the same conclusion: Emma likely had attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. (Because of the stigma sometimes affecting people with ADHD or other mental health disorders, TakePart has honored the family’s request to use pseudonyms.) Continue reading →

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November 30, 2014 by Michael Behar

Men’s Fitness | December 2014

Harness 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 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

Is Renewable Energy Ready for Takeoff? Download PDF

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

The New York Times Magazine | May 25, 2014

Invasion 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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