The U.S. Department of Energy has funded a clutch of research efforts at the various Energy Frontier Research Centers in an effort to improve the underlying economics of the technology, which is currently too expensive for mainstream markets.

FORBES: The Trillion Mile-Per-Gallon Engine

Yet who can deny, as the geographers complain, that at the frontier of research, abstract economic modelling and the real world have moved dispiritingly far apart?

ECONOMIST: Knowing your place

The frontier of biomedical research is inside an unassuming green box with a black-and-white touchscreen mounted on a rack in the International Space Station.

FORBES: Doing Science In Zero-G? You'll Have To Go Through Nanoracks

If there's a frontier in golf research, it's neuroscience.

WSJ: Why Scientists Love to Study Golf

Research units such as its recently created Institute for Frontier Medicine regularly break new ground.

CNN: ASIANOW | The Asiaweek Best Universities 1999 | The Rankings | #2 Kyoto University