The Aedes aegypti mosquito that can carry dengue, yellow fever, and Zika was thought to be too reliant on a hot and wet climate to survive in the Mountain West. But now, a population is thriving in Western Colorado. Hannah Livesay, biologist at the Grand River Mosquito Control District, points out the characteristic white markings of an Aedes aegypti mosquito shown under a microscope at her lab in Grand Junction, Colo. It can carry life-threatening diseases. It's difficult to find and hard to kill.

The climbers at Earth Treks gym, in Golden, Colorado, were warming up: stretching, strapping themselves into harnesses, and chalking their hands as they prepared to scale walls stippled with multicolored plastic holds. Seated off to one side, with a slim gray plastic band wrapped around his brow, Erik Weihenmayer was warming up, too--by reading flash cards. "I see an'E' at the end," he said, sweeping his head over the top card, from side to side and up and down. Weihenmayer moved triumphantly on to the next card. Erik Weihenmayer is the only blind person to have climbed Mt. He was born with juvenile retinoschisis, an inherited condition that caused his retinas to disintegrate completely by his freshman year of high school. Unable to play the ball games at which his father and his brothers excelled, he took to climbing after being introduced to it at a summer camp for the blind. He learned to pat the rock face with his hands or tap it with an ice axe to find his next hold, following the sound of a small bell worn by a guide, who also described the terrain ahead. With this technique, he has summited the tallest peaks on all seven continents.

I've never been very big on New Year's resolutions. I've tried them in the past, and while they are nice to think about, they are always overly vague, difficult to accomplish in a year, trite, or just don't get done (or attempted). This year I decided to try something different instead of just not making resolutions at all. I set out some professional goals for myself as a Data Scientist. Open source software is only as good as its community and/or developer(s).