As an Enthusiast News Network, theTUNDRA.com has the good fortune of interviewing 1000s of dedicated enthusiasts across the vast landscape of special interests, but never have we met as impassioned, and informed, an expert in new product development as Tom Barnes, Director of R&D and Labs at pickleball industry leader ‪SelkirkSport‬ the family owned and operated company that's pretty darn lucky to call Tom one-of-their-own (he's one of four brothers running the biz); because if Tom wasn't in the fam, he'd no doubt be running Microsoft, Apple or THE WORLD...(or maybe all three???). For the art and the science of paddle manufacturing technology, check-this-out...you're welcome, pickleball enthusiasts!!

Considered the most innovative company to emerge over the past year serving the amateur pickleball community (TAM casts a wide-net from 5MM to 52MM+), PICKLE4's CEO Ben Weinberger shares with Elliot Rothstein, Host of Collegiate Pickleball Tailgate, a few key takeaways PICKLE4 has learned while launching extraordinary, one-of-a-kind events including PICKLE4's Ballpark Series at Fenway & Oracle ballparks in 2023, and its recent acquisition of the iconic US Open Pickleball Championships, among other complementary business ventures (Pickleball Den & The Pickler). We're placing our bets on PICKLE4 for the long haul...

he NHL Draft wrapped up over the weekend and a few teams looking like they have super teams in the works. Which teams took in a great class? Who leaves us concerned? Plus, some NHL trade quick-fire at the end. Mike Fink dives into the draft and more with Blain Potvin, who covers the Montreal Canadians for The Hockey Writers, and Brooke Lofurno who covers the Chicago Blackhawks for The Hockey Writers.

Roger Wiens is a planetary scientist and Fellow at ‪@LosAlamosNationalLab‬. He is the principal investigator for both the ChemCam instrument aboard the Mars Curiosity rover and the SuperCam instrument, aboard the Perseverance rover. The SuperCam on NASA's Perseverance rover examines rocks and soils with a camera, laser and spectrometers to seek organic compounds that could be related to past life on Mars. It can identify the chemical and mineral makeup of targets as small as a pencil point from a distance of more than 20 feet (7 meters)

Mehmet S. Tosun is the Barbara Smith Campbell Distinguished Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). He is also a Professor of Economics and the Director of International Programs in the College of Business. His research interests and expertise include public finance (particularly tax policy), regional economics, and economics of population and demography. The billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos have recently successfully reached the edge of space. Dr. Tosun of the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno, discusses the impact of these flights on the space economy.

Anders Johansen is a Professor of Astronomy at Lund Observatory at Lund University in Sweden, working there on topics such as planet formation, accretion discs, turbulence, and supercomputing. He obtained his PhD in 2007 at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. After that he spent a bit more than two years as a postdoc at Leiden Observatory. Anders obtained his docent degree from Lund University in 2013. According to a study led by ProfessorJohansen, Earth, Venus and Mars were created from small dust particles containing ice and carbon. The discovery opens up the possibility that the Milky Way may be filled with aquatic planets.

Hai-Bo Yu is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside. His main research fields are: theoretical particle physics and astrophysics. Supermassive black holes, or SMBHs, are black holes with masses that are several million to billion times the mass of our sun. Hai-Bo Yu from the ‪University of California‬, Riverside, sheds more light on the origin of these massive and mysterious objects.

Dr. Konstantin Getman received an honor master's degree in astronomy at Moscow State University in 1994 and his Ph.D. degree in physics and mathematics at Pushkov Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radiowave Propagation of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1999. Since 2001, he has been at the Pennsylvania State University where he is currently a research professor. His research is focused on star formation and stellar activity. By conducting the largest survey ever of star-forming regions in X-rays, a team of researchers led by Dr. Getman of the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) has helped outline the link between very powerful flares, or outbursts, from youthful stars, and the impact they could have on planets in orbit.

Diana Dragomir is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on the demographics and atmospheres of exoplanets smaller than Neptune. She is particularly interested in super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, planets with radii between those of the Earth and Neptune. A team of astronomers, including Dragomir of the University of New Mexico, has recently discovered a new exoplanet orbiting a nearby star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-1231 b, is Neptune-sized, with a radius nearly four times greater than that of the Earth.

Charlotte Olsen is a doctoral student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. In the summer of 2016, Charlotte was granted an internship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to study enhanced star formation in interacting galaxies. In general, she studies how galaxies evolve by way of how they form stars. A simultaneous “baby boom” of new stars has been detected in 36 dwarf galaxies. Olsen has found that dwarf galaxies far from each other slowed down and then simultaneously accelerated their birth rate of stars.