RECENT POSTS 
Since the beginning of the year, I am pursuing a masters degree in international journalism at a Scottish university. As such, I have had the great pleasure to talk with a former FT.com editor about my blog here at Scilogs.com, and she gave me great advice. Moreover, one of our first assignments is to come up with a multimedia blog. These are some key takeaways of my current blogs' analysis: Use lots of images Use lots of links Use... Read more
About three decades ago, my girlfriend came to the world as a preemie, born in the 33rd week of pregnancy. She weighed only 3.7 lbs. For the record: every birth before the 37th week of gestation is considered preterm and hence risky. There were no complications, and she grew up healthily and normally. The truth is: there is a lot that could have gone wrong. There are things the doctors didn't know in the 1980ies. One of these things is... Read more
There are many definitions of what an innovation is. Usually, it is a new idea that is transferred into a service or good that customers will pay for. In that sense, the major smartphone producers like Samsung and Apple are producing innovative products: they are profitable and people buy their (incremental) innovations. In another sense, they are totally not delivering innovations: more cores, faster CPU speed, 64-bit architecture, fingerprint readers, more sensors, yeah. It’s all nice to have. But these... Read more
...And Can Dragon Slayers, Earthquakes And Forests Help Us To Find Future Mass Murderers? What do you usually bring along you when you go to the cinema? Wallet, jacket, partner(s), children, friends, car keys? So far, so good. How about a bulletproof vest? Or a map outlining the probability of your favorite cinema being attacked by a mass shooter on that evening? Would you go if it showed, let‘s say, a twelve percent chance this will happen? The bad news:... Read more
Let's play a thought experiment today, shall we? It is a cold Monday morning in the middle of winter. You are driving to work by car. Even though you are the car’s owner and you are sitting in the driver's seat, you are not actually driving. You only fasten your seat belt, enter your destination - and your car does the rest. It is an autonomous car that takes its own decisions. It can read road signs and adjust its... Read more
When you think of the Trojan Horse, what comes to your mind? Perhaps not the most positive associations: In the tale about the Trojan War, the Greek soldiers left it behind to deceive and eventually eradicate the Trojans. Nowadays, „trojan horse“ labels a specific type of malware program that infect our computers and open backdoors for hackers while pretending they do something benign. Let's face it: The Trojan Horse's reputation could be better. And yet last week I came across... Read more
