Arnie Cooper

Lions, gorillas, and wolves, oh my! Two on-the-ground proponents of saving the tropics think a great way to both engage and enlighten the West is to deploy a dollop of satire.

The former chief economist for the IMF discusses the unfairness of the existing American financial infrastructure and the complex policy prescriptions that seek a remedy.

It’s the president of the free-market-minded Galen Institute versus a pediatrician/activist for a single-payer system in spirited debate on improving American health care.

In the quarter-century since Marc Reisner issued a grim prognosis for water in the American West, various entities have made efforts to reverse what once seemed inevitable.

While not every dire prediction has come true, amid swimming pools and thirsty crops, the hard truth remains that the American West cannot maintain its spendthrift ways of using fresh water.

On The 25th anniversary of the book “Cadillac Desert,” we look at the work of an earlier Cassandra of Western water shortages, explorer John Wesley Powell.

The environment is faltering even as measurements show human well-being is improving. How long can that last?

Issues swirling around Europe’s non-assimilation of its Muslim population recall its anti-Semitic past, according to scholar Reza Aslan.

Scholar Reza Aslan discusses anti-Islamic feelings in the U.S. and reflects on how other faiths have faced down feelings of “otherness.”

A dye made from the purple pokeberry — a common weed — proves uncommonly effective at juicing up the prospects for solar power.

A leading archaeologist’s take on the pre-European Maya discounts ‘ecocide’ and suggests the people were actually astute stewards of the jungle who could teach us a thing or two.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a list that can be abused to the detriment of patients and benefit of drug companies.

Conflicts, whether over ties to the pharmaceutical industry or fights over new categories of illness, come with the turf in revising psychiatry’s most important reference.

The latest “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” is being revised and, by some, reviled.

Demonstration farm in rural California draws attention with its crop of unique building experiments.

New monitoring systems should make smart bridges that let on when they’re feeling fatigued.

An American-led famine early warning system uses satellite technology to predict where best to stave off future starving in the rest of the world.

Scientists are adapting the gecko’s ‘sticky feet’ to create bonding materials for sporting equipment and robots.

Engineers at Nissan creating a buzz with their ‘Safety Shield.’

Sto Corp’s self-cleaning Lotusan exterior paint uses the plant’s micro-structural qualities to remove dirt just after a rain.

A growing number of scientists, ecologists and entrepreneurs have begun to incorporate ‘biomimicry’ across a vast spectrum of enterprises.

An African skyscraper built in 2007 features a unique climate-control system inspired by the gigantic termite mounds found in the Zimbabwean bush.

MIT students use the concept of phototropism to design a sun-tracking solar panel that requires no motor or electronic control system.

Venture capitalist Woody Tasch has a down-to-earth approach — literally — for fixing what’s eating the economy.

An angry Mother Nature and increasing urbanization have led Columbia’s Dickson Despommier to urge agriculturalists to consider tilling vertical farms in high-rises. A Miller-McCune.com interview.

A new generation of machines, some based on nature’s own designs, is mobilizing to draw cheap and carbon-free renewable energy from the seas.

Biophilic concepts are gradually working their way into the design mainstream, helping humans thrive by bringing the outdoors in.