Science
Let's Do Launch
It’s the modern equivalent of watching those first ambitious fish haul themselves up onto dry land, topped off with the explosive power of the world’s most expensive firework. If you ever need a little inspiration, a space shuttle launch will make you appreciate how remarkable human beings really are. (more)
Spruce Bark Beetles: Scourge of Southern Alaska
The strongest spruce trees, those that have remained green an extra season even as the 85% to 98% mortality rate among them takes its toll, seem to be weeping. Those that can resist the growing infestation of spruce bark beetles do so by forcing the insects’ eggs from within their wounded trunks with an outpouring of viscous orange sap, pouring in rivulets toward the desiccated earth. (more)
NASA’s Struggle for Space
The biological model that seems to be humanity’s destiny is not at all uncommon: We need a somewhat healthy (and preferably planet-shaped) host to survive as a species, even as we are driven to adapt it, come hell or high water, to our personal desires. (more)
Piñon Bark Beetles
In 2002, another 160,000 acres of picturesque piñon forest, twice as many as the year before, fell to the insatiable appetites of tiny Ips pini, no larger than a grain of rice but, along with its cousins in the Dendrodoctonus genii, one of the biggest threats to our nation’s evergreen forests. (more)
Offshoring in Paradise
When the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer was looking for an offshore solution, Costa Rica hadn’t even made the list, which included Mexico, Brazil and Chile. It was considered to small, too laid-back and too expensive (per capita earnings are among the hemisphere’s highest) for the job. But this little country, famed for its exotic wildlife and exploding volcanoes, was conveniently right on the way south. Besides, who wouldn’t want to take a “business trip” to paradise? (more)
Global Warming in a Very Cold Place
Though most Americans still don’t believe in global warming, the well-documented trend of rapidly increasing global temperatures that (perhaps coin-cidentally) parallels humankind’s growing reliance on fossil fuels, the majority of Alaskans concede that the weather is, indeed, changing. (more)
Los Alamos:
New Mexico’s Atomic City
As it occupies what’s easily one of New Mexico’s most stunning settings, at the gateway to the Jemez Mountains, hot springs and ski areas, you might expect Los Alamos to be a kitschy resort town.
Not even close. (more)
The Beetle that Devoured the Kenai Peninsula
Alaska likes to call itself the “Last Frontier,” which, apologies to Captain Kirk, is no exaggeration. At the same time that folks in the lower 48 were building nuclear bombs, homesteaders here were struggling to survive alone, without benefit of electricity or neighbors, an unforgiving and grizzly-infested wilderness. Like Little House on the Prairie, but really dark and cold. (more)