Bill Becken

Bill Becken is a freelance researcher and writer with more than 20 years of experience in B2B communications and publishing. Most recently, Becken has contributed stories and top-tier executive interviews to B2B outlets with a focus on technology, travel, transportation and healthcare. He can be reached at billbecken@gmail.com.

Articles by Bill Becken

• Tech firms vie against range of mobile retail payment systems from banks, others

  Tuesday, November 06, 2018

  A half-decade or so since its introduction, Apple Pay continues to dazzle. It's the best-known of the world's mobile phone, contactless payment systems. And, by introducing new iPhones and iPads each year, Apple keeps its devices popular, stirring the Apple Pay pot. Despite Apple Pay's standing, new bank and bank card mobile apps, among others, have also made their mark on retail payments. Considering the advent of Apple Pay's contactless counterparts for non-Apple phones — Android Pay and Samsung Pay — the existence of a variety of services has been the defining trait of the mobile payments scene.

• New plastics and composites impact design, engineering across the world economy

  Monday, October 15, 2018

  The productive versatility of modern manufacturing is evolving quickly — whether it comes to new processes or innovative plastics and composite materials. Of course, modern plastics and plastic-reinforced composites go back several decades in manufacturing. But, at least compared to legacy materials such as titanium, iron, steel and aluminum, these materials are still coming of age. Design and manufacturing engineers are only just now getting to know their latest iterations’ utility and the scope of their potential and promise.

• Plastics, bioplastics augment and replace metal parts in farming machinery

  Monday, September 24, 2018

  Quietly and without much fanfare, plastics and bioplastics are finding their way into the production of agricultural equipment, such as tractors, combines, plows and balers. Over the past decade, major manufacturers such as John Deere and International Harvester have transitioned both cosmetic and functional components from sheet metal to plastics and bioplastics, with very good results. Manufacturers have discovered a nifty truth, especially regarding bioplastics: They more than cut the mustard.

• Can bioplastics help solve the world’s plastic disposal problem?

  Monday, August 27, 2018

  The world’s conventional polymers, derived from petroleum feedstocks, have outstanding benefits, such as durability, convenience and low costs. But they are largely unsustainable. It has become a consensus: Plastics are having a materially distressing, foreboding impact on the environment. Sustainable polymers (aka bioplastics) address those shortcomings while trying to maintain conventional polymers’ incredible, undeniable virtues. To have newer, sustainable plastics match those traits, at the same cost, will be a tall order. But maybe, just maybe, it can be done.

• Apple Pay, NFC services face competitors that could disrupt payment processing

  Wednesday, August 22, 2018

  Apple reached a milestone recently when it became the world’s first trillion-dollar company. It helped that, during its more than 40-year history, it has introduced some incredible innovations and products, most cannily directed at and designed for the end user. But a somewhat recent one, Apple Pay, also took aim at the retail and commercial markets, this time through mobile phone payments. There is no doubt mobile payments will continue to find more users in a retail context. But despite all the innovation in this area, smartphone payments, it seems, remain in their infancy.

• Medical-retail drugstore partnerships strengthen business, promote public health

  Friday, August 03, 2018

  In the last decade or so, some healthcare providers have partnered with retail drugstore chains like CVS and Walgreens to operate storefront health clinics. The clinics can deliver low-cost but high-quality care in a venue that is usually more convenient than a doctor's office. The clinics tend to be well-utilized, even if they offer only a relatively narrow set of authorized services for minor ailments. The clinics are open at times where the only alternative might be a hospital emergency room.

• Plastics innovations spur changes in medical device markets

  Thursday, July 19, 2018

  Plastics are playing their part in the disruptive medical device market, which is now subject to several eye-popping trends, including miniaturization, point-of-care (POC) diagnostics, multipurpose packaging and globalization. The medical plastics industry has so far adapted well to the changing device landscape, with new products arising from novel groupings of manufacturing professionals such as design engineers, mold makers, material suppliers, and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

• GIS plays expanding role at the Centers for Disease Control

  Friday, June 29, 2018

  ​In the last few years, geographic information systems (GIS), geography, geospatial science and visualization have been applied much more often in the public health work of the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A major operating component of the federal, cabinet-level Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the CDC is the principal government agency charged with conducting and maintaining a wide range of critical public health activities.

• GIS-savvy surveyors muster political will to lobby at multiple levels of government

  Monday, May 21, 2018

  Surveying is daytime work — especially if it invokes today’s remarkable high-tech geospatial mapping and navigational tools, known collectively as geographic information systems (GIS). Nighttime or off-hours duties aren’t usually associated with it. Yet those are exactly what many land surveyors have shouldered lately — as members of one or more of their professional associations — as they attempt to cogently address the legislative and political issues facing the profession.

• Shootings propel new look at an old objective: Preparing youth for the inevitable

  Wednesday, May 16, 2018

  The decades-long rise of gun-related violence in U.S. schools reached a zenith of sorts with the shooting at the high school in Parkland, Florida. Seemingly, they have also led to a new interest in educating students about death as a part of life. And why shouldn’t death be proactively prepared for? After all, it comes for everyone, including for one’s friends and loved ones; for great leaders and scholars; for everyone and anyone, all of the time.

• Counselors’ role likely to evolve to help stop further violence on campus, comfort victims

  Tuesday, May 08, 2018

  Earlier this year, a disaffected former high school student returned to his alma mater in Parkland, Florida, and randomly massacred 17 students and teachers with gunfire, injuring 17 others. In subsequent weeks, protesters filled the streets in cities and towns nationally, pressing for legislative change. Their demands at first did not exactly gain traction in the U.S. Congress. Instead, there were multiple reform-minded responses from other government, public and nonprofit quarters — including one from the American Counseling Association.

• Rainwater harvesting comes of age across the (dry) land

  Thursday, March 29, 2018

  ​There are those in vehement denial of the research and data indicating that water resources across the planet are growing increasingly scarce. For others, it's abundantly clear: Climate change, overdevelopment and population growth are leading to severe shortages of potable water.

• Drones and LIDAR pump up aerial surveying and mapping

  Tuesday, March 27, 2018

  ​One might think that maybe, just maybe, advancing technology would not disrupt the age-old, venerated profession of land surveying in the U.S. After all, Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were surveyors as young men, and President Thomas Jefferson was one generally throughout his life.

• As medical wearables find a home, usage concerns remain

  Thursday, March 08, 2018

  ​New wearable digital technology devices are certainly nifty and enticing. First-generation wearables measure caloric intake and consumption; track blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygenation and sleep stages; and check and correct posture, among other functions — and these are only some of their roles.

• Midwest emerging as bustling tech hub

  Tuesday, March 06, 2018

  ​Tech businesses are leaving Silicon Valley, literally and figuratively. But where to? As an initial answer, it was perhaps 2017's biggest business story: Amazon, the online retailer, is looking for a new urban setting as an alternative to the Seattle metro area for its second North American headquarters (HQ2).

• Nuclear standoff with North Korea prompts interest in new weapons

  Friday, February 23, 2018

  ​With rogue nations such as North Korea developing intercontinental ballistic missiles systems (ICBMs) able to reach North America, the U.S. government is showing new interest in using high-powered radio frequency microwave weapons (HPMs) to disable them.

• Google offers global geospatial analysis for the masses

  Tuesday, February 20, 2018

  ​A plethora of global remote-sensing technologies acquire terabytes of environmental data minute by minute. Much of it is routed to and through the cloud. This was not the case perhaps a decade ago.

• Mapping degraded lands with applied geospatial knowledge

  Tuesday, February 13, 2018

  ​Will the restoration of degraded lands come to the rescue of a world short on water, arable land and space — a world long on polluted water, unusable land and mouths to feed, young and old?

• Scope of nanotechnology widens in 2018

  Monday, February 12, 2018

  ​There's miniaturization, and then there's nanotechnology. Global markets are growing and multiplying for both. But it's the point of nanotech to effect desired technical solutions and outcomes with ever-smaller — much, much smaller — building blocks of materials.

• Medication-assisted treatment gets a big expansion in California

  Friday, February 02, 2018

  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and California's Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) have recently stepped up their fight of the multimillion-dollar anti-opioid war by opening an expansive new front in the Golden State with $90 million in funds. These funds flow from the DHHS' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) under the U.S. 21st Century Cures Act. The program is known as the Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) Expansion Project.

• Geographic information systems show their true economic value

  Tuesday, January 30, 2018

  Consumers and businesses have embraced geographic information systems (GIS) as a huge boon in their lives. The systems are accurate sources of information; they're time- and fuel-saving modalities; and, taken together, they're an omniscient, daily valet.

• Hidden testimony: Substance abuse among attorneys

  Tuesday, January 16, 2018

  Attorneys advocate adversarially for others. By doing so they hold their clients' trust and fate in their hands. Their own willful impairment via drug and/or alcohol use would pose a shocking threat to those who may be struggling themselves — that is, not just their clients, but all those who may otherwise rely upon them, like family and friends.

• Boomers and millennials traveling more — and differently

  Wednesday, January 10, 2018

  Baby boomers are traveling more than ever and certainly remain the global travel industry's cash cow. But they're slowly being replaced by millennials. The two groups' travel habits and styles are distinct. Going forward in 2018, each group is showing certain differences and similarities in tastes, preferences and booking behavior.

• Cannabis habitats: Hemp as a building aid comes of age

  Tuesday, January 09, 2018

  Despite the recent Justice Department ruling, the forward march continues toward pervasive legalization of the plant cannabis sativa. A survey of U.S. state marijuana laws shows that, as of 2018, a decisive majority of states have legalized medicinal use of marijuana — and some even its recreational use (in seven states and the District of Columbia). Not surprisingly, legal cannabis businesses are expanding and multiplying across America.

• Anxiety and depression no longer lurk in the shadows

  Thursday, January 04, 2018

  The prevalence of anxiety and depression (A&D) is increasing worldwide. The impact of this illness — the costs its treatment invokes, as well as its increased prevalence — has invited comparisons with leading chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer and coronary artery disease.

• What lies ahead for the travel industry in 2018

  Wednesday, January 03, 2018

  Travel is becoming less a discretionary activity and more of a necessity, especially if you subscribe to Abraham Maslow's theory that puts human needs in a hierarchical pyramid.

• Transformative trips: 6 trends climbing the horizons of wellness travel

  Wednesday, December 13, 2017

  In an increasingly chaotic world, it is not surprising that wellness travel should be the fastest-growing sector of the travel industry. According to a study by the Florida-based Global Wellness Institute, travelers are spending more than $500 million on wellness trips, comprising some 15 percent of the global travel pie.