In Northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest places on Earth, microorganisms are able to eke out an existence by extracting water from the very rocks they colonize. Through work in the field and laboratory experiments, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, as well as Johns Hopkins University and UC Riverside, gained an in-depth understanding of the mechanisms by which some cyanobacteria survive in harsh surroundings.

"What a microgrid is, is the ability for a battery to operate, separate from a utility, a number of lots," said Scott Hansen, vice president of KB Homes Forward Planning and Land Development. "If you want to think of it like an island of power unto itself." … The idea started two years ago with a federal grant and joint partnership between University of California-Irvine, KB Homes, SoCal Edison and SunPower. "How do we provide reliability to our customers?

"We know we're taking more than we're putting back in – how long do we have before we can't do that anymore?" said Alexandra Richey, who conducted the studies as a graduate student at UC Irvine. "We don't know, but we keep pumping. Which to me is terrifying." … Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a UC Irvine professor, said that aquifers should be studied and valued the same way as precious oil reserves.