Ecological hack

Photo courtesy of Tali Hammond.

Nope. This is not a cybernetic chipmunk (although wouldn't that be cool). It is a chipmunk with a computerised backpack that is effectively tracking its every move on a tiny processor powered by a wafer thin battery. Now, that may not sound like technology worth investing in to you and me but to ecologists who have to spend thousands of hours in the wilderness tracking small animals, it is a godsend. Moreover, this little gadget was built by one of the most interdisciplinary research teams that I have seen in a long time. Read my full article covering this research in The Economist here. 

Podcast: Detecting explosives

I was just on The Economist's science podcast Babbage discussing the technologies that we are developing to better detect the sorts of explosives that were used in the tragic attacks in Belgium last week. You can listen to the podcast here.