Why does Stephen study whale earwax?

A psychologist with wide-ranging interests, Stephen Trumble studies everything from rats to zebrafish, but these days whale earwax is taking over his Baylor University lab. There are already 30 pieces of it lined up, each requiring about a year’s worth of analysis — and he hopes to obtain five times as many. He’s doing this because hidden in all that wax is information that could tell us how life has been changing for whales and the Arctic in the past 100 years or more.

David Benet had problems to solve when he came in to lead the highest-growth unit at a large medical devices company. Although sales had increased when two new products launched the previous year, the numbers still fell short of expectations, given all the evidence of unmet customer needs. The company’s future hinged on the success of both products — an instrument for inserting stents into blocked arteries and an electronic implant for stabilizing cardiac rhythm.