Their teal, barn-like tasting room is surrounded by steep hills and razor-edged desert plants.

BBC: A colourful journey into California��s wild interior

It's a succulent oasis on 3 acres that uses very little water, a surprisingly exotic island of sculptural desert plants surrounded by suburbia.

WSJ: Ruth Bancroft, Growing a Piece of History

Heading inland again, 150km from Guerrero Negro towards the small town of San Ignacio, the landscape becomes more desert-like and some of the stranger desert plants, like the boojum tree, make an appearance.

BBC: Driving from the top to the tip of Baja California

In California the building of desert based solar power plants has caused outbreaks of valley fever among workers, infected by spores that have emerged from the disturbed soil.

BBC: Bees on their knees while bed bugs boom

So, it can help hydrate both plants and people in desert regions around the world.

ENGADGET

BrightSource was founded in 2004 by American-Israeli pioneer Arnold Goldman, whose Luz International built nine solar thermal power plants in the Mojave Desert in the 1980s and 1990s.

FORBES: Reading the fine print of BrightSource's $250 million IPO

To achieve these feats, Nektar's scientists performed hundreds of hours of computer simulations, tested more than a dozen different formulations of dried insulin and traveled around the world drawing inspiration from ancient Chinese seeds, plants in the Mexican desert and production techniques used in making instant coffee, powdered milk, aviation aerodynamics, truck fuel injectors and industrial vacuum pumps.

FORBES: The Impossible Made Possible

Everywhere there are huge bleached whalebones, the crumbling hulks of shipwrecks, dead plants, and the footprints of infrequent desert creatures, all on a desperate search for sustenance.

BBC: The ghostly shore of Namibia��s Skeleton Coast

They look at a forest or a desert and they track rainfall patterns, or air and soil temperatures, what plants grow there and who eats what.

NPR: Warming Will Create Micro-Climates, Scientists Say