Samantha Garvey wants to be a marine biologist and the science-focused 17 year old is now one of 61 finalists from Long Island in the Intel Science & Engineering Fair for her pioneering work with mussels.

But the real story of this scientist-in-training is that she is able to excel in the classroom as an honor’s student without all the creature comforts of home. In fact, the teen and her family are homeless and living in a shelter on Long Island, New York.

Both of her parents were unable to work following a car accident. As a result of falling behind on their rent, the family was evicted from their apartment on December 31. After advancing to the Intel finals, this science rags to riches story garnered national attention and a community banded together to get the family a house.

Samantha Garvey, Intel Science Fair Finalist

Now the science. The enterprising Samantha has been studying inedible marsh mussels for the last two years. But a nagging question kept eating at her and prompted her investigation, which she entered into the Intel science competition. She was studying how mussels settle in salt marshes and noticed mussel concentrations appeared to be higher in areas where there were more crabs, one of the mussels’ primary predators.

She tells Good Day New York, “I thought this was weird. How are they surviving in areas where they are being preyed upon?”

Thinking that observation runs counter to what she would expect she did a little experiment, studying mussels in areas of low and high crab predation. She discovered that that mussel shells were actually thicker in super crabby areas and a bit thinner in less crabby waters.

So she tested her theory by putting crabs and mussels together to see what would happen. She discovered that the mussels adapted to the threat by increasing the thickness of their shells.

Garvey says, “I discovered when you expose a crab to a mussel, they grew thicker, heavier shells to defend themselves.”

Hoping to be selected from 1,500 finalists from 65 countries as a $100,000 scholarship winner of the Intel science competition, Garvey intends to study marine biology at either Brown or Yale, her top two picks for her undergraduate studies. From there she would like to continue studying invasive species.

Full interview (6:54) with Samantha Garvey on Good Day New York. Greg finds out why there are holes in mussels at restaurants.

The growing garbage problem may have a new solution–fungus that eats plastic. For years mounting mounds of plastic have been choking landfills and polluting the ocean. Now an annual undergraduate trip to the rain forest may have found a solution to the plastic problem.

Unleashing creativity in science sometimes has amazing results. That’s what a group of Yale students discovered after they took a trip to the Amazon rainforest in search of fungus that could hold medical or scientific promise. Upon their return they tested the fungus to see if they could detect any biological activity.

One undergrad started the project in 2010 and then graduated. Another 2011 participant in the Yale Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory course picked up where she left off and that led to the isolation and discovery of an enzyme in a fungus that helps degrade polyurethane and turns it back into carbon.

Dr. Scott Strobel says, “The average third grader asks all kinds of great questions; they probe, poke and manipulate. Then somewhere around fourth grade we drive the interest in science right out of these kids. People conclude they can’t do science, but in reality they have been doing science all their lives.”

He teamed up with Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create the class and create opportunities for students to apply what they learn in the classroom to the real world. HHMI gave a $1 million grant to fund the program for four years.

Yale biochemist Kaury Kucera is a post doctorate researcher who co-leads the annual rainforest trek. She told the New Haven Register, “We take 15 undergraduates into the Ecuadorean rain forest and collect plant samples.”

Each year, students collect organisms called endophytes found in rainforest plants and then take them back to New Haven to test them for biological activity. The whole program is student-generated so they decide what they want to study. Once back in the lab, students analyze the endophytes that show biological activity to see whether they might have any medical or other practical use.

In 2008 Pria Anand was part of the trip to Ecuador where she gathered plants and later extracted part of a fungus to test its affect on plastic. Her goal was to help reduce the piles that are swelling in landfills, also known as bioremediation. She graduated in 2010 before getting the results she wanted.

Jeffrey Huang in the same class was studying which endophytes were most effective at breaking down chemical bonds.

This year, Jonathan Russell tested one of Huang’s best endophytes on Anand’s bioremdiation task. From there Russell focused on locating the enzyme in the fungus that is most effective on breaking down plastic.

All three undergrads are listed as lead authors on the forthcoming paper Biodegradation of Polyester Polyurethane by Endophytic Fungi in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

This is not the first time a particular agent has broken down polyurethane. But this enzyme can operate in an oxygen-free zone, such as those found underground in landfills.

Since the discovery students in another class are looking at different endophytes to see which if any will be most effective at dissolving polystyrene or styrofoam, one substance that is designed to stick around indefinitely.

Two different Yale students in the 2009 Rainforest Expedition class have had other fungal breakthroughs which could lead to a new “myco-diesel” biofuel and another which could protect agricultural farms from pathogens.

Breaking Down the Degradation of Common Items in Landfills

Decomposition Timeline, from Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, WA, photo by: Hadley Maris

*Undergraduates at Yale are working to find enzymes in rainforest fungus to reduce the decomposition timeline

Already heralded as the biggest step in cancer research in decades, a new cancer treatment is forcing conservative doctors and scientists to use words like, “Amazing.”

It’s premature to call this new treatment a cure since it has only been tried in three patients, all of whom have experienced either full remission or seen a significant drop in the number of cancer cells.

The experimental treatment boosts a leukemia patient’s own immune system by turning infection-fighting T-cells into cancer cell serial killers.

The process involves taking the patient’s own blood, removing the T-cells and replacing them with a harmless, modified version of the HIV virus. Then the genetically engineered treatment is infused back into the patient where the army of cancer fighters are unleashed on cancer tumors and cells as they form.

For two weeks after the treatment was given to the patients there was no reaction. Then the patients became violently ill, which meant the treatment was working. Reporting the worst flu symptoms of their lives, the patients were flushing all the cancer out of their bodies and it made them sick.

After that episode, two patients remain cancer free one year post-treatment and the third is much improved. All three patients had late-stage leukemia with few other treatment options.

Doctors are cautiously optimistic. They don’t know how long the genetically engineered cells will remain in the body or if the cancer will return after a certain period of time. But already this treatment is being explored to fight pancreatic, brain and other cancers to see if it has the same results.

Dr. Carl June and a research team at University of Pennsylvania discuss new leukemia cancer treatment using modified HIV virus. (5:26)

Gender stereotypes about math and science abound. Boys are known for performing better in math and science while girls tend to excel in history and language arts. Though the U.S. still leads the world in scientific discovery and vision, another stereotype is that the U.S. education system is failing students and allowing other countries to out compete citizens for global jobs.

The results of the six-month long Google Science Fair blew both of those stereotypes right out of the water. Three girls, all from the U.S. won the first annual science competition. They beat out 10,000 other students from 90 countries, demonstrating female and U.S. prominence in science.

But perhaps more notable than breaking stereotypes is the potential real science that these young women are doing. One has discovered a way to make ovarian cancer treatments more effective. Another wants to revise the Clean Air Act using her model, quantifying air pollution among asthmatics. And the third winning project could lead to a barbeque meat marinade that reduces carcinogens.

Shree Bose, Age 17

When not in the cancer lab, Bose enjoys a good cattle drive near her home of Fort Worth, Texas.

For her ground-breaking science project, she won $50,000 from Google as well as a trip to the Galapagos Islands on the National Geographic Discovery research ship. She will also have an opportunity to have a once in a lifetime internship experience at CERN, the nuclear physics lab in Switzerland.

Alice Bell, one of the judges for the Google Science Fair and a writer for the UK paper The Guardian says that the teens she met through the judging process are not the public. She says, “It is perhaps best to think of schoolchildren as holding a liminal position with respect to science and the rest of society. They are not quite inside the scientific community or squarely outside it either. They are both science and ‘the public’, and they are neither of these things, yet. Their lives could go in a range of directions.”

One thing is for sure, after winning this new scientific accolade, none of these girls lives will ever be the same.

Naomi Shaw, Age 16

In her project she quotes a common saying among environmentalists, “The genetic make-up is like loading a gun. The environmental pollutants represent the trigger!”

Shah noticed that doctors are quick to prescribe steroids and other inhalers, instead of addressing the quality of the air asthma sufferers are breathing. She learned that’s because nobody had figured out how much air pollution affects lung function. So she did.

Online environmental magazine Grist calls Shah awesome, not because she is a budding scientist but because she “let’s her green flag fly.” Shah describes herself as an environmentalist as well as an objective scientist in training.

She says, “Air quality doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves, and should be one of the top sustainability goals for the coming future.”

Shah took first place at the Intel Science Fair earlier this year. Since then she has sent President Obama and Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Lisa Jackson a letter asking for her mathematical model to be used to revise the Clean Air Act.

Lauren Hodge, Age 14

She found that lemon juice and brown sugar cut the level of carcinogens sharply, while soy sauce increased them.

Shah and Hodge each received $25000 scholarships and internships at Google and LEGO.

Girl power ruled the day at the first Google Science Fair.

Bose is proud of that fact. She told the New York Times, “Personally I think that’s amazing, because throughout my entire life, I’ve heard science is a field where men go into.” She added, “It just starts to show you that women are stepping up in science, and I’m excited that I was able to represent maybe just a little bit of that.”

Google science fair judge Vint Cerf was secretly pleased by the female sweep in all three age groups. Of the 15 finalists, there were 9 boys and 6 girls.

Though the competition was completely gender neutral, he says, “I was secretly very pleased to see that happen. This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can.”

When the final mission of the U.S. space shuttle program blasted off flawlessly on Friday, over one million onlookers gathered in Florida for the launch. Tens of millions more watched on television. But what they couldn’t see amid the liftoff fire and smoke was all the science that was en route to the International Space Station.

Space Shuttle Atlantis has a lot of experiments, including one from a Hawaiian biotech company called Tissue Genesis Incorporated. The company has been working with NASA for ten years to study the effects of microgravity on stem cells regenerated from fat tissue.

The research can be applied to fight vascular disease, improve heart bypass surgery and orthopedics.

Houston’s Odyssey Space Research put two Apple iPhones on the last shuttle mission, not so they can phone home from space but to conduct experiments using mobile applications.

Astronauts will use an app called SpaceLab. The experiment app was built to test iPhone cameras and gyroscopes as well as test the effects of radiation on the devices.

Others hope that iPhones will be able to replace some of the expensive and faulty navigation equipment that generally accompanies most space missions.

Besides biotech and high tech companies sending experiments into space the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program has sent a few projects as well.

A mini lab, about the size of a brick contains both professional and student science experiments. The Materials Dispersion Apparatus (MDA) houses about 90 different experiments, including 11 student experiments.

Ranging from yeast to tomatoes and from goldfish eggs to mouth bacteria student experiments will study the effects of microgravity by comparing samples on the ground to those that flew into space. Students will look for differences in cell structure, behavior or growth of their samples.

And though it is the last shuttle mission to the ISS, one experiment will perform a white-glove test of the space station to see if it is remaining biological clean after years of use. a state of the art lab on a chip will be able to detect biological and chemicals on any surface.

Another novel experiment comes from Arizona State University, where Cheryl Nickerson is working on developing next generation vaccines.

The microbiologist has been studying infection in microgravity and has already discovered that the salmonella bacteria becomes more virulent in zero-gravity.

She says, “Our earlier work showed the potential for spaceflight to provide novel insight into the mechanisms of microbial virulence that may lead to innovations in infectious disease control here on Earth.”

Now Nickerson and her colleague Roy Curtiss III, the director of the Biodesign Institute are hoping to find cures to hepatitis B, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, AIDS and pneumonia by enlisting the help of salmonella.

When the final flight of Atlantis returns she and Curtiss will examine their Recombinant Attenuated Salmonella Vaccine (RASV) payload to determine if microgravity makes the experimental vaccine that already proves powerful against pneumonia even stronger after going to outer space.

The key to successful stem cell research and treatment is being able to create stable, self-renewing stem cells. For years, scientists have been able to make massive quantities of stem cells to enhance brain activity. The problem was that when they tested their treatments in mice, the stem cells often caused tumors to grow, creating a new disease that is much worse than the original.

Now, a team of 30 researchers at University of California San Diego have made groundbreaking advancements in neural stem cell research which may change the future for patients with vision problems and eventually help those with Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Kang Zhang has been focused on studying eye problems. The ophthalmologist studies ocular genetics and has a particular interest in stopping macular degeneration, glaucoma and other diseases of the eye.

Now his team has found a way to slow the progression of macular degeneration using the novel stem cell treatment.

The self-renewing stem cell approach that Dr. Zhang’s team created can grow a very large quantity of neural stem cells without the dire consequences of developing tumors.

While Dr. Zhang is busy creating eye-specific neurons to repair the ones lost in diseases like macular degeneration he believes his treatment can be used to fight other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about this breakthrough. The North County Times talked to two researchers who recognized this advance as an important step but reiterated the incremental nature over the breakthrough.

UC Davis cell biologist Paul Knoepfler says, “The fact that [the] group made the neural progenitors from human embryonic stem cells using only a fairly straightforward chemical cocktail should make this approach one that other researchers in the field can readily replicate.”

Sanford-Burnham Research Institute cell researcher Evan Snyder was less enthusiastic about Dr. Zhang’s development.

He called the research an incremental advance not the big leap forward. He told the newspaper, “The neural stem cell derivatives are still limited in the range of cell types they can yield; the authors are still not seeing the full spectrum of neurectoderm derivatives that they should be seeing — including neural crest and glial cells (that determine neuron function). He adds, “True neural stem cells should be able to give rise to the range of neurectodermal progeny, including glia and neural crest in addition to neurons.

10 scientific facts you thought you knew…that most people don’t.

Is there gravity in space?
How long can a goldfish hold a memory?
How much of our brains do we really use?
Does lightning ever strike twice?
How long does it take to digest chewing gum?
Does a microwave cook food from the inside out or outside in?
Did humans and dinosaurs ever coexist?

Selection of a DNA aptamer for homocysteine using SELEX from Maureen McKeague on Vimeo.

About 50 recent doctors of philosophy decided to make their often obscure doctoral dissertations a little more hip and lively so they entered Science magazine’s Dance Your Ph. D. contest. Making Her research on a chemistry method called Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SELEX) come alive through an interpretive dance, scientist and dancer Maureen McKeague from Carelton Unviersity in Ottawa, Canada took home the top prize last fall.

Her dance, titled “Selection of a DNA aptamer for homocysteine using systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment” doesn’t sound like something that could be easily translated for a non-scientist let alone set to the music of Lady Gaga, among others.

The target is a small molecule called homocysteine, the main dancer with a target painted on her shirt. (That’s Maureen McKeague.) SELEX is a chemical technique that creates short RNA and DNA segments called aptamers (the other dancers). Aptamers are nucleic acids that can be designed to stick to any molecule–in this case the amino acid homocysteine. Watch for the Taq Polymerase scene in the middle of the dance. High levels of homocysteine in blood is associated with heart disease.

Dr. McKeague’s work aims to use the SELEX process to make aptamers to easily and cheaply measure homocysteine levels in blood samples. She and the 12 students in Maria DeRosa’s bionanotechnology research group helped give McKeague her win, which was announced in a special event in New York in October.

45 Ph.D. students entered the 2010 Dance Your Ph.D. contest. McKeague won with 69 percent of the online vote. You can view all the finalists here.

President Obama bestowed medals on researchers and scientists in a ceremony in the East Room on Wednesday. The President presented the National Medal of Science to ten eminent researchers and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation to three individuals and a three-person team for a wide range of groundbreaking achievements. The medals are the highest honors bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors.

And the National Medal of Science winners are…

Yakir Aharonov, Chapman University, CA
“For his contributions to the foundations of quantum physics and for drawing out unexpected implications of that field ranging from the Aharonov-Bohm effect to the theory of weak measurement.”

Stephen J. Benkovic, Pennsylvania State University, PA
“For his research contributions in the field of bioorganic chemistry, which have changed our understanding of how enzymes function and advanced the identification of targets and strategies for drug design.”

Esther M. Conwell, University of Rochester, NY
“For her broad contributions to understanding electron and hole transport in semiconducting materials, which helped to enable commercial applications of semiconductor and organic electronic devices, and for extending her analysis to studying the electronic properties of DNA.”

Marye Anne Fox, University of California San Diego, CA
“For her research contributions in the areas of organic photochemistry and electrochemistry and for enhancing our understanding of excited-state and charge-transfer processes with interdisciplinary applications in material science, solar energy conversion, and environmental chemistry.”

Susan L. Lindquist, Whitehead Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA
“For her studies of protein folding, demonstrating that alternative protein conformations and aggregations can have profound and unexpected biological influences, facilitating insights in fields as wide-ranging as human disease, evolution, and biomaterials.”

Mortimer Mishkin, National Institutes of Health, MD
“For his contributions to understanding the neural basis of perception and memory in primates, notably the delineation of sensory neocortical processing systems especially for vision, audition, and somatic sensation, and the organization of memory systems in the brain.”

David B. Mumford, Brown University, RI
“For his contributions to the field of mathematics, which fundamentally changed algebraic geometry, and for connecting mathematics to other disciplines such as computer vision and neurobiology.”

Stanley B. Prusiner, University of California San Francisco, CA
“For his discovery of prions, the causative agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and other related neurodegenerative diseases, and his continuing efforts to develop effective methods for detecting and treating prion diseases.”

Warren M. Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research, CO
“For his development and use of global climate models to understand climate and explain the role of human activities and natural processes in the Earth’s climate system, and for his work to support a diverse science and engineering workforce.”

Amnon Yariv, California Institute of Technology, CA
“For foundational contributions to photonics and quantum electronics, including his demonstration of the semiconductor distributed feedback laser that underpins today’s high-speed optical fiber communications.”

National Medal of Technology and Innovation

Individuals

Harry W. Coover, Eastman Chemical Company, TN
“For his invention of cyanoacrylates—novel adhesives known widely to consumers as ‘super glues’—which today play significant roles in medicine and industry.”

Helen M. Free, Miles Laboratories, IN
“For her seminal contributions to diagnostic chemistry through development of dip-and-read urinalysis, which gave rise to a technological revolution in convenient, reliable, point-of-care tests and patient self-monitoring.”

Steven J. Sasson, Eastman Kodak Company, NY
“For the invention of the digital camera, which has revolutionized the way images are captured, stored, and shared, creating new opportunities in commerce, education, and global communication.”

Team

Federico Faggin,
Marcian E. Hoff Jr., Stanley Mazor; Intel Corporation, CA
“For the conception, design and application of the first microprocessor, which was commercially adopted and became the universal building block of digital electronic systems, significantly impacting the global economy and people’s day-to-day lives.”

Gary Wesche is counting the days. It’s down to 14 now before he heads to Antarctica as part of a scientific expedition. KMBC’s Bev Chapman reports from St. Regis Catholic School in Kansas City.

Wesche’s expedition to study ice sheets is organized by PolarTREC where you can follow Gary’s adventure.

Other teachers are embarking on similar adventures, Sarah Diers to study dissolved organic matter on the Cotton Glacier and Casey O’Hara will participate in cutting edge physics at the IceCube Neutrino Lab.

Beer has been flavoring human culture for at least 9,000 years. During that time, the rich brew has transformed and evolved to satisfy the complex palates of the time.

Now, science is a driving force in making beer. And, understanding some of the chemistry can refine color, aroma and flavor.

More Info:
IBU Chart Graph

Dogfish Head Brewery owner Sam Calagione talks ancient beer.

Evidence of global warming is hitting the Arctic harder than anywhere else. The rate of climate change is twice that of the rest of the world.

And, now scientists are discovering the Arctic region plays an important role in capturing atmospheric carbon, both in the ocean and on land.

But that delicate system might be in jeopardy as the polar ice caps melt, triggering a feedback loop of increased warming and melting.

As permafrost melts for the first time ever, there might be a big threat looming–methane–which could help convert the Arctic carbon sink into a big greenhouse gas emitter.

Visualization of a river bed created using VisTrails, a system developed by University of Utah computer scientists Photo by: Juliana Freire and Claudio Silva, University of Utah

A two-year experiment to build a framework to analyze the massive amount of data scientists are collecting will push research to better understand our planet, our bodies and the limits of the Internet.

The National Science Foundation initiative called Cluster Exploratory or the CLuE program is a partnership between I.B.M. and Google to put scientists to work solving the problem of how to deal with so much information.

The answer? Cloud computing. Using virtual locations online to cope with the large data stream will allow science to answer some big and complex questions.

Top 8 in the Science Cloud:

Sloan Digital Sky Survey–obtained deep, multi-color images covering more than a quarter of the sky and created 3-dimensional maps containing more than 930,000 galaxies and more than 120,000 quasars.

Visible Human–is an anatomical data set licensed from the National Library of Medicine, Visible Human Project.

IRIS Seismology Database–allows you to monitor global earthquakes in near real-time, visit seismic stations around the world, and search the web for earthquake or region-related information.

Protein Data Bank–contains information about experimentally-determined structures of proteins, nucleic acids, and complex assemblies.

Linguistic Data Consortium–supports language-related education, research and technology development by creating and sharing linguistic resources.

TerraFly–View images and data anywhere in the United States and in much of the World.

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope–A large aperture, wide field survey telescope and 3200 Megapixel camera to image faint astronomical objects across the sky.

Open Topography–provides integrated access to high-resolution topographic data and web-based processing tools as well as enables its user community to share knowledge, resources and build science collaborations.

While most serious scientists are wringing their hands, wondering who will win the Nobel prizes, a different group of scientists is celebrating the lighter–but just as bona fide–side of science.

The 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony shined a silly look at science at Harvard last week. Here’s a breakdown of the winners in each category. The Ig Nobel goes to…

Economics:
Icelandic bank management and auditors–for demonstrating how to bankrupt a national economy.

Math:
Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank–for printing currency ranging from one cent to 100 trillion dollars.

Public Health:
Elena Bodnar–for inventing a bra that’s good during an emergency.

Physics:
Katherine Whitcome, Daniel Lieberman and Liza Shapiro–for answering the question: Why don’t pregnant women tip over?

Medicine:
Donald Unger–for proving his mother wrong and discovering that knuckle cracking doesn’t cause arthritis.

Veterinary Medicine:
Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson–for discovering that cows with names give more milk at dairy farms.

Peace:
Stephan Bollinger–for determining that empty beer bottles will do more damage then full ones when smashed over someone’s head.

Chemistry:
Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga and Victor Castano–for making diamonds out of tequila.

Biology:
Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei–for finding a bacteria in panda poop that eats kitchen garbage.

Literature:
Ireland’s Police Service–for writing more than 50 traffic tickets to Prawo Jazdy, the most frequent driving offender in Ireland. The name in Polish means…”Driving License.”

Every year (since 1901) the Nobel Foundation has been honoring the final wish of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

This year the three science prizes went to nine scientists who overcame a big biology problem, harnessed light and unraveled the mechanism at the heart of a cell.

Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology:
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak

Nobel Prize for Physics:
Charles Kao, Willard Boyle and George Smith

Nobel Prize for Chemistry:
Thomas Seitz, Ada Yonath and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

The biggest business lobby in the U.S. is pushing for the EPA to hold a public hearing to debate the science of global warming.

The move, calling for the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st Century, is proving too much for some chamber members, from big utilities to Nike and Johnson & Johnson.

Yesterday, the EPA announced it was moving forward with its plan to regulate stationary sources of greenhouse gas, including some 14,000 coal-fired power plants and refineries.

Now the ball is back in the chamber’s court and it’s time for it to decide whether it wants to sue the EPA and try to put the science on trial.

REALscience dissects the petition submitted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which reads like an anti-global warming play book.

A Yeast Cell with Synthetic Genes, courtesy of Dr. Pamela Silver, Harvard Medical School

Life is often stranger than fiction. But the direction that biology is heading, synthetic life could be stranger than science fiction.

The emerging field of synthetic biology is moving closer and closer to creating new forms of life in the lab.

Amy Wright Collects Samples While Diving, courtesy of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University

Cures to the most mundane and deadly illnesses have been found deep in the jungles, high in the mountains and hidden in the rainforests. But until recently not many scientists were looking to the ocean as another source of medicine.

But sponges, coral, snails and other marine creatures have a lot to offer the medical community. The small molecules that make them so adaptive to their harsh environments could give medical science an edge in fighting cancer, chronic pain and auto-immune diseases.

Story written and produced by Michelle Ma

New research from University of Washington shows that the sweet, pleasant smells in fragrances that dominate air fresheners and laundry detergents may strike a sour health note when analyzed chemically.

The researcher found toxic chemicals that are considered hazardous by the federal government. But the products used in the experiment were not released.

Someday fossil fuels will no longer fill our gas tanks. But what will replace gas as the fuel of the future? Some are betting that we will become a hydrogen economy.

But there are many barriers blocking the way. A Virginia Tech chemist thinks he’s overcome the major hurdles and has even created a revolutionary process to extract hydrogen from natural sugars found in plants.

See related story about using enzymes to turn trash into sugars.

A group of scientists hot on the trail of what makes cancer spread has discovered a protein that might be responsible.

Dr. Robert Tanguay

Zebrafish embryo

Will particles smaller than a virus or many chemical compounds hurt people, animals or the environment? That is the unanswered question of nanotechnology and one of the biggest fears. Government agencies are starting to fund scientists looking at this question in hopes of determining what to expect at the atomic level where all bets are off.

The medical use of embryonic stem cells is a considerable source of controversy. But the practice might be more easily sold to the public now that a team of scientists has figured out how to turn adult cells into stem cells. It works in mice. Now science just has to prove it works in humans.

When meat is cooked it develops carcinogenic properties. But new research shows a simple trick for reducing these cancer causing agents with items in the average kitchen cupboard.

Birds get it. Dogs get it. And people get it. Depression is a biochemical abnormality that is found in animals. Now a new drug similar to a commonly prescribed human anti-depressant is showing signs of hope for dogs with the blues.

What happens when good proteins go bad? Well, disease, of course. Mad cow disease is probably the most familiar involving clusters of bad proteins called prions. They can jump across species and turn perfectly good proteins into microscopic miscreants.