Stories by Starre Vartan

Starre Vartan is a freelance writer with an unslaked curiosity about the natural world, which was sparked in an outdoors childhood spent in the tide pools of Sydney, Australia and the wetlands of New York's Hudson Valley. Starre was previously a columnist at Audubon and has written for Newsweek, Medium, Slate, NASA's Astrobiology magazine, and others about the intersection of geology, biology and technology. Follow Starre Vartan on Twitter @thecurioushuman

Pollution

Assessing COVID Risk and More with Air Quality Monitors

The consumer devices track pollutants as well as CO₂—a proxy for potentially virus-laden human breath

October 13, 2021 — Starre Vartan

Computing

Racial Bias Found in a Major Health Care Risk Algorithm

Black patients lose out on critical care when systems equate health needs with costs

October 24, 2019 — Starre Vartan

Biotech

AI Can Predict Kidney Failure Days in Advance

A new program could save lives in hospitals, where kidney injury is one of the most common causes of death

July 31, 2019 — Starre Vartan

Biotech

Can 3-D Printing Produce Lung and Liver Tissue for Transplants?

New technique creates working models—with a little help from grocery-store food coloring

May 6, 2019 — Starre Vartan

Technology

Technology Unlocks the Mysteries of Bird Flight

Bob Dylan asked: "Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?" Sure, this is a metaphor (in Dylan's case, for a lost love) but it works because the complexities of avian flight—from migration and navigation to group dynamics—have long been a mystery, one with a preponderance of ideas, but few firm answers...

September 24, 2014 — Starre Vartan