Ask any young athlete about MRSA (short for the ominous-sounding methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and they might have a story to tell about their terrible experience with the disease. Easily spread in contact sports such as football and wrestling, MRSA is a skin infection that starts off as a painful, swollen…

Since the dawn of the space age in 1957, 80 countries and intergovernmental organizations have launched more than 9,000 objects into space — with nearly 800 in just the past year. While the benefits of this explosive rise in space-based ventures are many (better communications, scientific advancements and stronger national…

Almost a quarter of the ground in the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost. This frozen ground supports critical energy infrastructure and unique ecosystems, and it also serves as one of the largest land-based stores of organic carbon matter on Earth. Across the world, permafrost traps 1,300 billion tons of carbon, or…

When people think about water in this area, acequias might immediately come to mind. They are an important part of New Mexico history and have been providing water to crops dating back to Native peoples in the 1400s. Year in and year out, the complex irrigation systems literally brought life…

In Michael Crichton’s 1990 science fiction novel Jurassic Park, scientists working for billionaire entrepreneur John Hammond successfully cloned dinosaur DNA strands with the help of frog DNA. And just like that, these scientists created living dinosaurs. Although Hammond got many things wrong in the novel, he did get one thing…

Mars has always been a source of mystery, exciting the imaginations of sci-fi writers, filmmakers and the public. Recent scientific discoveries have simultaneously satisfied and stoked the flames of our curiosity about our nearest planetary neighbor. A decade of research enabled by NASA’s aptly named Curiosity rover has revealed that…

Solar cells are normally installed in the form of rooftop modules. Rooftop solar panels, however, suffer from a major roadblock on the path to a renewable energy future for one simple reason: rooftop space is severely limited in large, densely populated cities, such as New York or London. On the…

The Polar Regions on Earth — the areas around the North and South Poles — have about 9 million square miles of sea ice floating in their oceans. Once inhabited by very few people, the Polar Regions are now home to more people than ever before; there are more than…

By Kent Coombs A lot of time…