Welcome | Victor D. Chase

Selected Works

Books

Shattered Nerves: How Science Is Solving Modern Medicine's Most Perplexing Problem

My book is as much about the people involved in this dynamic new field as it is about the science. In it I tell the stories of the researchers and of the patients on whom this technology is being tested, some of whom have become an intrinsic part of the teams creating these devices.

Computer Articles

Modeling An Earth-Shaking Event

“Earthquakes don’t kill people,” seismologist Arthur Rodgers says. “Buildings do.”

“There are casualties in earthquakes because buildings collapse, freeway sections collapse, and bridges go out,” says Rodgers, a member of an earthquake modeling team at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In essence, “We are vulnerable to earthquake damage because we choose to build and live near places where earthquakes occur.”

Made to Order: IBM Makes Sense Out of Unstructured Data

Researchers are developing systems to bring a rapidly growing and seemingly uncontrollable mass of information, into an orderly, usable state of being. IBM's Think Research, 2002

Environmental Articles

Model Mixes Ice, Heat, Water And Salt To View The Ocean's Future

Within the next several decades, ice over the Arctic will completely disappear during the summer. That’s just one of the clear and dramatic predictions to come from models developed by the Climate Ocean and Sea Ice Modeling (COSIM) program at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Additionally, “The models now predict globally an average surface temperature rise of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years,” says the program’s project manager, Philip Jones. And the oceans account for more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface.

Waiter There’s a Dye in My Soup

Food dye may prove to be the ultimate safe pesticide. Environmental Health Perspectives (a publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences), Volume 104, Number 2, February 1996.

Welcome to My Web Site

I am a professional writer and editor with special emphasis on science and technology.

During some 30 years in the field I have garnered newspaper, wire service, and magazine experience. Most recently, I authored a book, entitled Shattered Nerves: How Science Is Solving Modern Medicine's Most Perplexing Problem, about an exciting new area of medical implant technology created to return sight to the blind, movement to the paralyzed, and hearing to the deaf. Published late in 2006 by Johns Hopkins University Press, Shattered Nerves was recently cited by the Library Journal as one of the best science books of 2006.

While the focus of my writing over the years has been on science, I am a generalist by training and nature, with a degree in journalism from Ohio State University. This orientation has allowed me to specialize in making a wide range of complex subjects understandable and interesting to laymen and experts alike.

As a science writer I have covered, advanced energy technology, aviation and space, chemistry, computers, electronics, the environment, medical technology, and telecommunications.

My credits reflect the range of subjects I write about. They include, Air & Space Smithsonian, MIT's Technology Review, Nature Medicine, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, IBM's Think Research, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Environmental Health Perspectives (the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences), Better Homes & Gardens, CIO Insight, Deixis (a DOE publication) Mechanical Engineering, National Forum, R&D Magazine, Science Digest, Good Housekeeping, and Pictures of the Future (a publication of Siemens AG).

I have also written feature articles for a number of Web-based publications, among them IBM's Intra and Internet sites, Minority Scientists Network, published jointly by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Science Magazine, and JustGarciaHill, another minority scientists site, published by the research society Sigma Xi.

I am a member of the Authors Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of Science Writers.

Once the stuff of science fiction, neural prosthetics are now a reality. Research and technology are creating implants that enable the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and the paralyzed to move.

In Shattered Nerves I take the reader on a journey into a new medical frontier, where sophisticated, state-of-the-art medical devices repair and restore failed sensory and motor systems. In a narrative that reveals the intimate relationship between technology and the physicians, scientists, and patients who bring it to life, I explore groundbreaking developments in neural technology.

Victor D. Chase