Rebecca Ramirez

Mathematician John Urschel contains multitudes. These days, he researches linear algebra at MIT, but he also had another career: professional NFL football player. The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Im hide caption

Karen Chin in the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, where she is the curator of paleontology. She is also a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a leading expert on fossilized dinosaur feces. Casey A. Cass/University of Colo hide caption

Kenji López-Alt says spatchcocking the turkey is the best way to overcome the common problem of light meat overcooking by the time dark meat is ready. Viktoria Agureeva/Getty Images hide caption

Tourists walk around the base of the Washington Monument as smoke from wildfires in Canada casts a haze of the U.S. Capitol on the National Mall in June of this year. Air pollution alerts were issued across the United States due to the fires. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

A member of the emergency services walks near a crack cutting across the main road in Grindavik, Iceland following recent earthquakes. The southwestern town was evacuated early Saturday after magma shifting under the Earth's crust caused hundreds of earthquakes that experts warned could be a precursor to a volcanic eruption. Kjartan Torbjoernsson/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Research has found that trees contribute to the formation of clouds, which reflect heat from the sun and cool the atmosphere in the immediate area. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images hide caption

A cross section map of Challenger Deep, the deepest point on planet Earth. John Nelson/Esri hide caption

The United States Department of Agriculture's rabies management program includes delivering oral vaccines to raccoons — by plane, helicopter and vehicle — to control the spread of rabies. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

With an antimicrobial resistance epidemic looming, some researchers are looking to solutions in molecular de-extinction. altmodern/Getty Images hide caption

Scientists have built an enormous atlas of the human brain that could help them chart a path toward preventing and treating many different neurological disorders. imaginima/Getty images hide caption

Scientists are using AI to design synthetic proteins with hopes it will speed up the discovery process. Ian C Haydon/ UW Institute for Protein Design hide caption

Microbiologist Monsi Roman stands next to an ISS Life Support test module at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Monsi Roman hide caption

Seaweed Generation's marine biologist Duncan Smallman at the company's workshop in Glasgow, Scotland. Robert Ormerod for NPR hide caption

Schmidtea mediterranea is an especially appealing animal for scientists who research regeneration because, when cut, each of the fragments will regenerate into a complete, new organism. Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado/Wikimedia Commons hide caption

The sample return capsule from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission touched down in the desert on September 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. NASA/Keegan Barber hide caption

The itchy sensation alerts our bodies to potential threats on our skin, but in some cases, itch can become a chronic condition. Warumpha Pojchananaphasiri/Getty Images hide caption

Since its launch, the James Webb Space Telescope has sent back detailed images and spectra of galaxies from when the universe was just 900 million years old. NASA, ESA, CSA, Simon Lilly (ETH Zurich), Daichi Kashino (Nagoya University), Jorryt Matthee (ETH Zurich), Christina Eilers (MIT), Rongmon Bordoloi (NCSU), Ruari Mackenzie (ETH Zurich) hide caption

Experts say the new COVID boosters are a much closer match to currently circulating variants than prior vaccines and boosters. JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The cover of Ben Goldfarb's latest book, Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping The Future of Our Planet Courtesy of W.W. Norton and Co. hide caption

For more than decade, members of the Chumash tribe have led a campaign to create a new marine sanctuary on the central California coast. It could include waters off Point Conception, a sacred site for the Chumash people. Robert Schwemmer/NOAA hide caption

Globally, there are more than 400 million UTIs a year. This illustration depicts the most common kind of UTI—bladder (blue) inflammation caused by E. coli (red). TUMEGGY/Getty Images/Science Photo Library hide caption