Hi, I’m Boonsri Dickinson.
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I’m a science and technology journalist, a blogger, a host, and a producer. I am a contributing writer for SmartPlanet. My work has appeared in CNET, Discover magazine, Thomson Reuters, Nature, New Scientist, Wired, GreenTech Media, The Huffington Post and Forbes. I specialize in blogging, online news writing, multimedia (mostly videos, sometimes photo galleries), and feature writing for magazines.
I was one of the first to have my DNA tested. Oh, and I loooooove adventure: I even have a dinosaur named after me (The Four Babes Trike).
Sometimes, I geek out over math and science. You can’t blame me though. I got my master’s degree in Chemical Engineering.
How Much Can You Learn From a Home DNA Test?
(feature appeared on the cover of Discover magazine in Sept 2008)
This story is as intimate as I will get with you. In it, I unzip my genes and give you a sneak peek at my biological destiny. I took three DNA tests from three different DNA testing companies—one from a firm called Navigenics, one from 23andMe, and one from deCODE genetics.
I was so hyped up about getting my DNA analyzed, I didn’t really think about the consequences of having all that information at my fingertips. Perhaps that’s typical of a 25-year-old. I’m working at my first job out of college and living in New York City. There’s plenty in the here and now to worry about: The homeless man deliberately running into me on my way to work. Living on a shoestring budget. Finding Mr. Right.
Some of the test results from the three companies matched up with one another.
Some didn’t.
Predicting Success in VC [Thomson Reuters June 2011]
An algorithm developed by venture-backed Quid might be able to replace associates, or it could just be interesting water cooler chatter
Every venture capitalist wants to know what sector is ripe for innovation and when to invest.
Firms often ask young associates to do the leg work, by attending conferences and meeting with cash-hungry startups that are under the radar. Or firms compile data from independent sources, such as from Gartner and other market research firms, to come up with an overview of a particular sector.
Then, they go look for companies that have potential to dominate the market.
But imagine plugging data into a computer, such as hiring trends and past rounds of funding for thousands of companies in a sector, and then having software that crunches the numbers and predicts what areas are untapped by startups and ripe for investment opportunities. That way, when a gung-ho entrepreneur walks in a firm’s door with a startup idea that goes after the market sector predicted by the algorithm, a VC knows whether to listen to the pitch, or play on the iPad while the entrepreneur talks.
If you had the insight to choose which promising ideas would succeed, then you could be the next Peter Thiel, who had the foresight to be the first outside investor in Facebook.
One San Francisco-based, VC-backed, startup already has the algorithm to help you get up to Thiel’s league. That company is Quid.
Full story on Venture Capital Journal (subscription only).
Quid pros land $10 million in funding [CNET]
5 Questions for the Developing World’s Disease Fighter [Discover magazine]
Driven by a love of design, Jose Gomez-Marquez, 33, studied mechanical engineering. And then, moved by an equally strong desire for social justice, he decided to devote that skill to leveling the playing field in health care. Today he directs the Innovations in International Health program at MIT, and his inventions (including an inhalable measles vaccine and a system that monitors tuberculosis treatment) are helping to improve medical access in the developing world.
What inspired you to focus on health care for the poor?
I was born a preemie in Honduras in 1976, and sometimes I had to be in the hospital. Half the people in my family were doctors, and even as a little kid I could see the difference. Rich people like me went to private appointments. Poor people went to the public hospitals and had to wait in lines.Full interview on Discover magazine.
Turning toys into cheap medical gear[CNET]
Jose Gomez-Marquez is like the MacGyver of medical devices, hacking toys and turning them into gadgets that can be used to diagnose conditions such as diabetes and dengue fever. By taking everyday items like Legos and bike pumps and turning them into replacements for expensive medical devices, he’s attempting to save lives on the cheap.
“Most of the devices that get donated to developing countries fail because they were not designed to be used in these environments,” Gomez-Marquez said during a visit to CNET this week to show some of his creations. “We need to make the Land Rover version of medical devices for these countries. Right now we are sending the Ferrari versions and they fail.”
Read the full story on CNET. Watch the video.
The search for Earth-like planets explained (Video)
NASA scientists today announced a new planet called Kepler-16b that orbits two stars, a discovery that seems to bring to life the fictional Luke Skywalker home of Tatooine with its double sunset.
The system spotted by NASA consists of one star orbiting another, with the planet Kepler-16b circling both stars. Unlike the barren and rocky Tatooine from the Star Wars films, NASA believes Kepler-16b to be cold and gaseous.
The unique find was discovered in a cache of data recently acquired from NASA’s $600 million Kepler mission, the centerpiece of which is a telescope traveling through space 40 million miles from Earth.
One of the lead astronomers sifting through the Kepler data is Geoff Marcy, who has been credited with discovering 1,700 potential planets that exist outside of our solar system. About 200 of these planet “candidates” were later verified to be actual planets.
This week, Marcy and his colleagues announced they had found another 500 planet candidates. In addition, a Swiss team announced another 50 planets, bringing the total number of potential planets around other stars to about 2,500. Of the new batch, the Tattooine-like Kepler-16b has been verified to be an actual planet.
“We have over 250 stars containing multiple planets,” Marcy told CNET from Jackson Hole, Wy., where a conference is being held on extreme solar systems this week. “It’s pandemonium at the planetary party here at Jackson Lake Lodge.”
Full story on CNET. Or watch the video.
Vast Desert Solar Energy [Wired]
A different kind of extinction (feature)
MY CLAIM TO FAME is that I’ve had a dinosaur specimen named after me. In mid 2009 I visited a dig with palaeontologist Jack Horner, famous for discovering the first nests of baby dinosaurs and for providing technical advice on the Jurassic Park movies. And it was on that dig in the sweeping badlands of eastern Montana that he discovered my namesake: a juvenile Triceratops.
I met up with Horner at Montana State University in Bozeman, where he is curator of palaeontology at the Museum of the Rockies. And in fact he looked dressed for a Jurassic Park set, much as I’d expected him to, with a khaki shirt tucked into blue jeans.
Despite the straggly grey hair and thin silver glasses, he looked much younger than his 63 years. Pleasantries over, I hopped into my hired 4WD and followed his red pickup truck for five hours, straight into the land of the dinosaurs – a place called Hell Creek.
Read the full feature on Cosmos magazine.
Google science fair
Telomere Nobelist: Selling a ‘biological age’ test [New Scientist]
Facebook quietly rolls out facial-recognition
“Weinergate” reminds us yet again that photos can quickly become embarrassing, and even scandalous.
For this and other reasons, many consider it important to have control over who sees their photos. Facebook may be further pushing users’ sense of privacy limits with its latest privacy setting change: it has quietly rolled out a facial-recognition tool that will automate photo tagging and suggest friends to tag in your photos based on what they look like.
Read full story on CNET
Paraplegic’s post-college gig: Testing bionic legs
Austin Whitney graduated from UC Berkeley just last month, and he already has a full-time job. Whitney works as a human lab rat.
The 22-year-old paraplegic, who captured headlines recently when he walked across the stage at his commencement wearing bionic legs, now spends long days with the engineers who developed the customized robotic suit. He passionately believes in the device and its potential to alter the lives of those with spinal cord injuries, and he wants to do whatever he can to help perfect the prototype–for himself and others like him.
“We want to make the Model T version of an exoskeleton,” Whitney told CNET. “There are health benefits to mobility. It’s good for the circulatory and muscular systems, and there’s a social and mental benefit. Four years ago, I thought I was going to die on a hospital bed.”
Read the full story on CNET.
Bubble Motion’s Messages For The Masses
You’re not alone if you can’t stand the regular requests from Facebook friends to hide a cache of weapons or to hold hot merchandise for them in Mafia Wars. You also may not be interested in what’s cooking in FarmVille. Nonetheless, enough people play them to make the company that creates them rather valuable: San Francisco-based Zynga is pulling in an estimated $250 million a year with 230 million users, and has raised $219 million from venture investors.
Read the full story on Forbes.
Tooling around San Francisco’s TechShop
Startup helps find cheapest prescription drugs
3 Faces of Eve [feature in Discover magazine]
I grew up wishing I were white, but there was no disguising the thick black hair, straight bangs, and slanty eyes. Most of the time I smelled like pad thai. Then again, I wasn’t exactly Asian, either. I have always fallen somewhere in between the tidy categories that people like to make.
My Thai mom left her country for America when she was in her early twenties, and she met my white, 6-foot-4 dad at the University of Florida. We celebrated major holidays—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter—with my European side of the family. But Mom clung to everything that made her Asian, and she did a good job of making me look like a little Thai girl, especially when she put me in Asian dresses and dragged me to Asian parties.
Now that I am an adult, I embrace the Asian-ness in me. I have developed an obsession with sushi. On the other hand, I don’t look as Asian as I did as a child, except when I drink red wine and my cheeks flush and my eyes get small and squinty. Whichever way I turn, my identity is not transparent: Although my mom grew up in Thailand, she had Chinese parents. My dad’s ancestors came from England, Germany, and Ireland.
Read the full story in Discover magazine.
Monsanto’s alfalfa reaches Supreme Court
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v28/n3/full/nbt0310-184.html
LivingSocial may be reconsidering its IPO, report says
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20109880-93/livingsocial-may-be-reconsidering-ipo-report-says/
Here are some video web clips:
Video: Three consumer health apps that you should know about
Video: Non-toxic, sodium-ion batteries designed for grid storage
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/video-non-toxic-sodium-ion-batteries-designed-for-grid-storage/10976
Q&A: Mark Sirangelo on Dream Chaser and the future of space travel (Video)
Yeast goes beyond beer, joining the battle against malaria and it might even fill your fuel tank [Forbes]
Watch the video interview with Amyris CEO John Melo.
Teens inspire other teens at the Teens in Tech conference
Video: http://cnettv.cnet.com/teens-inspire-other-teens-teens-tech-conference/9742-1_53-50109535.html
Story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20089488-92/fired-techcrunch-teen-bounces-back-to-give-back
Video: Azumio apps: in good health
http://cnettv.cnet.com/azumio-apps-good-health/9742-1_53-50110141.html
Story: Azumio turns iPhone into a stress gauge
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20095687-1/azumio-app-turns-iphone-into-a-stress-gauge
Watch how robot cat ears can read your mood
(Video)
http://cnettv.cnet.com/watch-how-robot-cat-ears-can-read-your/9742-1_53-50107939.html
StubHub partners with SF Giants on mobile ticketing
(Video)
story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-20096906-92/stubhub-adds-mobile-ticketing-for-giants-fans
Fretlight: Learn to play guitar 10 times faster
Video
Story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20073086-1/fretlight-learn-to-play-guitar-10-times-faster/
High Tech Corridor: An idea-building partnership [The Engineer]
3 Great Uses of Twitter, According to Cofounder Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey was arriving in New York and felt like partying—so he picked up his cell phone and entered a few words of text into Twitter, the microblogging site he cofounded. “Within an hour we had a bar reserved, we had a vodka sponsor, and we had 300 people RSVP,” he says. Twitter now supports 6 million unique visitors to its Web site.
How did you come up with the idea of Twitter?
At age 14, I became fascinated with real-time physical information transfer—like couriers, taxis, 911. Then at 15, I worked as a programmer and built a bunch of dispatch systems. I wanted the same thing for my friends.Read the full interview on Discover magazine.
Instead of getting through security by submitting to pat downs at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, travelers can now choose a more hands-off approach: walking through a full-body screening machine that can peer right through a person’s outfit.
The device was originally created by engineer Doug McMakin and his team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as a means of virtually frisking terrorists. The technology uses radio waves to produce 3-D scans of passengers’ bodies, the same way radar captures images of planets’ surfaces. As passengers stand still with their hands up, two rotating antennas send out radio waves. The waves bounce off the skin and are collected by a receiver. Metals, plastics, and liquids between the skin and the receiver show up in images that are sent to security officials in another room.
Read the full story on Discover magazine.
U.S.-Mexican Border Wall Destroying Habitats for Endangered Animals
Sleepless In New York (Slideshow)
Non-Naked Bike protest Digs Deep Into The Heart of the Hasidic Community (video)
Thai Kitchen [The Bold Italic]
Thai people love cooking. My mom would spend all day in the kitchen making enough food to last the entire week. For my first 18 years, I ate mostly Thai food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I remember feeling the spice roar through my nerves, creating this intense fire inside my body. The sweet coconut curry calmed my senses with that mix of ginger, chili, and lemongrass – flavors that give Thai food its signature taste.
I kicked Thai food when I moved to the University of Florida – the Thai places around campus were terrible and the food didn’t even come close to my mom’s home-cooked meals. Plus, Pad Thai seemed less desirable as my attention turned to pizza and ice cream. I did try cooking it at home once, from one of the boxes sold at the grocery store, but the dish tasted like stale cereal.
After a decade-long hiatus, I was looking to rekindle my Thai cravings. But how would I find a restaurant in San Francisco that could live up to the food I ate as a kid?
Full story on The Bold Italic. Plus video.
Inside the car factory of the 21st century
As Tesla retires its expensive Roadster for a more affordable ride, the new Model S takes the spotlight at the plant in Fremont, California. Tesla opened its doors this weekend to its first customers for its new Model S.
We took a look at the production facility for this $49,500, seven passenger car.
With dino-like robots around me, I felt like I stepped into the future of manufacturing.
Full story here on SmartPlanet.
See the photo gallery.
AMRS — Amyris CEO John G. Melo Interviewed by Boonsri Dickinson
On the first day of Amyris’ listing on John G. Melo, CEO gives BioBusiness.TV an interview, hosted by Boonsri Dickinson. Amyris reprograms yeast to make high value carbons that can meet the exact specifications of customers.
