Today famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil poked his head out of his burrow and saw his shadow, meaning (according to the old German superstition) that we can expect six more weeks of winter. But the crowd gathered in Pennsylvania to see the rodent’s prediction stood in pre-dawn temps hovering just above freezing, almost twice the average for Groundhog Day there.

But many people around the country are wondering if Phil is a little off since they’ve hardly seen any winter and can’t really imagine six more weeks. Across the Midwest where temps hovered in the 60s people are thinking spring. Plants are poking through the dirt and trees are beginning to bud.

Chicago Feb. 02, 2011 and Feb. 02, 2012, courtesy of AP, photo by Kiichiro Sato

According to the National Weather Service Midland, Texas has seen more snow this year than Chicago or Minneapolis. Outside of Alaska the U.S. has been spared much of the harsh cold and snows of winter. On the last day of January Washington D.C. almost reached 70 degrees and the cherry trees were beginning to bud.

That’s quite a contrast to last Groundhog Day when a big blizzard crippled much of the country, killing 36 people, cutting power to millions and causing $1.8 billion in damage. For the season, it appears that just about every place is low on snow. Except Valdez, Alaska where 328 inches have fallen — 10 feet above normal, stranding residents and forcing emergency oil deliveries to keep the heat on.

Some are left wondering if this weird winter weather is a sign of global warming? The short answer is probably not. No one weather occurrence can be linked to climate change but trends over time paint picture that shows the planet is warming. There is a clear long term trend that is melting ice at each pole and on glaciers around the world.

Tom Wagner, the cryosphere progam manager at NASA says this winter weather pattern is likely within the zone of natural variability. While snow seems to be a no-show this year for most parts of the country, Wagner says that we actually had less snow at this time in 2006.

NASA attributes our mild winter to two atmospheric factors. The first is a strong positive Arctic Oscillation. That means that all the cold air that generally pushes south in winter is staying closer to the North Pole. On top of that we also have a La Nina year occurring in the Pacific Ocean where waters are cooler than average. That sends dry air over North America.

Wagner says, “The upshot of all this is that we wind up with all the snowstorms going to places like Alaska whereas here in the lower 48 we will wind up without a lot of snow.”

When you put those two pieces together most of us get the winter that wasn’t.

Here’s how it works.

Positive Arctic Oscillation Caused by Colder Stratosphere and Keeps Arctic Air in the Arctic, courtesy of NOAA

The cold jet stream dipped in Europe and Asia but remains bottled up over North America. That’s because another meteorological phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation is a little out of whack. Normally the AO and NAO are in lockstep but right now the National Weather Service satellites show the NAO is staying positive while the AO has gone negative. In a nutshell, that inverse in phase is a bit unusual and is preventing the cold air from descending over much of North America.

Halpert says 90 percent of the time the North Atlantic and Arctic oscillations are in synch.

If the groundhog is right and winter isn’t over yet then Jake Weltzin’s concern may have some merit. The U.S. Geological Survey ecologist is worried that trees and plants that are budding early may not bloom when the “inevitable deep freeze returns.”

Weltzin tells the Associated Press, “If you think about plants and animals being kind of biologic thermometers, they are indicating a very early spring.” He adds, “And, that’s a problem.”

Even though the U.S. has one-fifth of its usual winter snow cover and temperatures are unseasonably warm in many areas, the northern hemisphere is experiencing average winter snowfall as a whole. The Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University found January to be the third-least snow month on record in the contiguous U.S. since record keeping began in 1967. But Europe and parts of Asia are stuck in the deep freeze. Europe and Asia experienced the ninth snowiest January since 1966.

Snow fell in islands on the Adriatic Sea. Parts of the Black Sea froze near the coastline of Romania. And 112 people died from a vicious cold snap that left England coated in ice and the Ukraine shivering from frostbite.

Tourists Climb Snow Drift in Front of Kiev-Pecherskaya Lavra cathedral in the Ukraine, photo by Sergei Supinsky, AFP

Back in the U.S. New Jersey state climatologist David Robinson says he’s disgusted that duffers are golfing on his winter cross-country ski course. For the northeast U.S. the last few months have been among the warmest and least snowy on record. The Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University shows the region’s temperatures are five degrees warmer than average.

They are also golfing in Dayton, Ohio where Tuesday’s high was a balmy 60 degrees.

Ecologist Weltzin thinks if there is a big freeze after the plants begin to bud that will affect wine grapes and other fruit this year.

Jeff Masters, the director of meteorology at Weather Underground tells the Associated Press, “We’ve just had a remarkable run of unusual winters in the past six years globally.” He’s in the middle of the winter snowbelt in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he says winter hasn’t yet arrived.

Along Lake Erie which is usually frozen in the winter, a ferry service that shuttles passengers to islands began winter routes for the first time in six years.

Wagner says it’s hard to predict what the next two months will bring. When there is a positive Arctic Oscillation you get real variation in the position of the jet stream. So he says the weather in February and March “is anyone’s guess at this point.”

Punxsutaney Phil doesn’t rely on sophisticated computer models or satellite imagery to understand the complex nature of the atmosphere, weather and climate. He just looks up and if he sees his shadow he returns to the comfort of his hollow for another six weeks. Since he began forecasting the seasons in 1886 he has seen his shadow 100 times.

But he’s never wrong about winter’s end because according to Mike Johnston, the vice president of the inner circle (the top-hat toting group of men that run the Groundhog Day event) says Phil is “incapable of error” because he doesn’t factor geography into his predictions. Johnson says since the groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter this year, “I guarantee you someone’s going to have six more weeks of winter.”

Florida has been wrestling with its python problem for years. Thanks to the tropical temps in south Florida the Everglades National Park has become a dumping ground for unwanted reptiles, particularly the non-native Burmese python. Wildlife officials have been battling the snakes for about twenty years.

They presume that parents of kids who outgrew their pets and the pets who outgrew their owners freed the snakes in the swamp. Some also believe that the wild python population began to grow after Hurricane Andrew destroyed pet stores selling the exotic snakes in 1992.

Park Service's Al Mercado, Rep. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., Florida Wildlife Commission's Ron Bergeron and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar Hold a Burmese Python

On a regular basis, giant snakes are turn up in backyard swimming pools, terrorizing neighborhoods. And in November game officials found a 16-foot python that had swallowed a 76-pound deer. Burmese pythons can grow to 26 feet and weigh well over 200 pounds. And unlike in its home in southeast Asia, there are no known predators in Florida that keep the snake population in check.

A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that sightings of medium-sized animals like racoons, oppossums, rabbits, foxes, deer and bobcats are down dramatically — as much as 99 percent — in some parts of the Everglades where these snakes are most commonly found.

There is no way to tell for sure that the Burmese python is solely responsible for the drastic decline in medium-sized mammals. But scientists suspect it is. They are concerned that the invasive species will disrupt the food chain in the Everglades and upset the delicate ecosystem balance.

J.D. Wilson, a Virginia Tech research biologist and co-author on the study says, “The effects of declining mammal populations on the overall Everglades ecosystem, which extends well beyond the National Park boundaries, are likely profound.”

Between 2003 and 2011 researchers drove 39,000 miles of Everglades area roads, counting wildlife. Since 2000 the National Park Service has counted 1,825 Burmese pythons in and around the national park. The largest, 16.4-foot snake weighed 156 pounds and was captured earlier this month.

Burmese Python Swallows Adult Deer Whole in Florida, November 2011

Michael Dorcas, a biologist from Davidson College in North Carolina and the lead author of the study says, “The magnitude of these declines underscores the apparent incredible density of pythons in Everglades National Park.”

Here are the significant declines in medium-sized mammal sightings in the Florida Everglades.

Raccoons — down 99.3 percent
Oppossums — down 98.9 percent
White-tail deer — down 94.1 percent
Bobcats — down 87.5 percent
Rabbits — down 100 percent (no sightings)
Foxes — down 100 percent (no sightings)

The research also found slight increases in coyotes, Florida panthers, rodents and other mammals. But because those sightings were so rare they discounted them altogether.

Secretary Salazar says, “This study paints a stark picture of the real damage that Burmese pythons are causing to native wildlife and the Florida economy.”

The state of Florida banned the private ownership of Burmese pythons in 2010. Now the federal government announced new rules on January 17 that will ban the importation and interstate transport of Burmese pythons, yellow anacondas and three other invasive constrictors sold in the pet trade. All have been found roaming Everglades National Park.

Some believe the federal mandate goes a little too far. Practically, the snakes can only survive outside in a few parts of the country, including south Florida and Louisiana. The rest of the nation is just to cold for the snakes to take hold. Snake breeders and experts who use the mighty constrictors to educate people about reptiles say the overall ban could lead to a burgeoning black market for Burmese pythons and could hurt legitimate businesses in the process.

With some estimates of the Everglades invasive snake population approaching 30,000 research turns to understanding and limiting the spread of the invasive snake species.

Burmese pythons need freshwater to survive. But a team of biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey led by Kristen Hart in its Davie, Florida lab showed that the snakes can drink in their much-needed moisture through the tissue of animals they swallow. The team also ran experiments trying to understand the snakes relationship to water.

The team’s experiments suggest that newborn pythons can’t survive more than two months with only access to saltwater. But a pair of hatchlings survived over 200 days with access to only brackish (mix of fresh and saltwater) water. And a yearling snake with access to only saltwater survived 7 months. New research in the upcoming Journal of the Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology suggests that these super-swimming snakes could head for the sea and migrate long distances.

Scientists Haul a Big Burmese Python out of the Everglades

Already, Burmese pythons have already been found eating endangered wood rats on Key Largo, off the mainland Florida coast. The first snake was discovered alive in 2007 when two researchers studying federally endangered Key Largo woodrats were checking on the status of a male woodrat wearing a radio transmitter that had suddenly moved more than a mile from its original documented habitat.

The signal led the researchers — a University of St. Andrews graduate student Joanne Potts and a volunteer assistant — to a eight-foot Burmese python sunning itself.

The contents of the captured snake’s stomach included not only the collared woodrat but a second woodrat as well.

Jack Hanna, the director emeritus at the Columbus Zoo believes the Florida python problem is a state issue not a federal one. He is concerned that the far-reaching ban on exotic constrictors will choke commerce. He tells CBS This Morning the new ban might effect the 220 breeding programs at the nation’s zoos as well as hurt snake breeders.

He says, “There are reputable breeders in Florida and we can’t put these guys out of business because they help and there is a logical role with a lot of our breeding programs [at zoos].

Golden orbweaver spiders from Madagascar secrete the only spider silk that is gold in color, not white. And now a five-year project to create a cape is finished and on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. This is the first spider silk textile made since the late 19th Century.

Nicholas Godley and Simon Peers with Their Spider Silk Cape

Clothing designer Nicholas Godley designed the garment. He says, “The color is just incredible. It’s incredibly strong, incredibly soft, incredibly sticky.” But his creation goes beyond being just a fashion experiment. He adds, “In the scientific and medical world at least spider silk is many ways the Holy Grail — in many ways it’s one of the most incredible materials.”

1.2 million spiders made the golden silk thread that built the gold brocaded cape.

Textile expert Simon Peers explains the process, starting with the spiders. He says, “You can’t keep spiders together because they are cannibals — they eat each other.”

Golden Orbweaver Spiders from Madagascar

Once the spiders have finished their work, four strands of silk are twisted together to make an ultra-strong and extremely flexible golden thread for a team of humans to sew into fabric. This particular spider silk stretches another forty percent of its resting length, which makes it very difficult to work with as a textile.

Peers is a British expatriate who moved to Madagascar over 20 years ago where he established a business to promote and explore the island nation’s heritage of weaving.

According to Wired.com in 2009,

Peers conceived the idea of weaving spider silk after learning about the French missionary Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar during the 1880s and 1890s. Camboué built a small, hand-driven machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at once, without harming them.

Science News tells a slightly different tale.

At some point, Peers shared what he had learned with a friend who was doing academic research on Madagascar’s textiles. “And she enthused about this whole idea of spider silk,” Peers recalls. “In fact, she pursued it a little further than I did,” turning up details of the original machine that was used to “silk” spiders for that World’s Fair fabric. While in France, she had one small element of the silker reproduced and made Peers a present of the mechanical piece.

It then sat on a shelf in his office for years. Many, many years.

At the time the Godley and Peers project had made a large piece of fabric but had not cut the garment yet into a cape yet.

Textile expert Simon Peers and Fashion Designer Nicholas Godley Flank Model Bianca Gavrilas Wearing a Hand-Embroidered Spider Silk Cape

Molecular biologist Randy Lewis is also stuck on spider silk and is always looking for new practical applications for the material in the real world. With a tensile strength greater than steel and even kevlar (used in bullet-proof vests) spider silk is an ultralight weight material that could stop a speeding bullet.

Lewis lives in Wyoming and decided to combine his knowledge of animal husbandry with cutting-edge genetics. In the process he made transgenic goats that produced spider silk in their milk. That’s one way to overcome the spider labor problem faced by Godley and Peers.

Peers estimates that the spider silk project took hundreds of thousands of hours when you factor in the work of the spiders.

Excerpt from NOVA’s Making Stuff show about spider silk, featuring Simon Peers and Randy Lewis.

After several deaths of people in Cambodia, Vietnam and China recently, the bird flu is making a comeback in public discourse. Concerns are growing about the H5N1 strain of the influenza virus. A few years ago the world-sweeping swine flu stole headlines but the bird flu, which is much more virulent than it’s porcine cousin, has been spreading from poultry to people.

An 18-year-old duck farmer in Vietnam died last week, becoming the first bird flu fatality in that country in two years. The World Health Organization also reports that a two-year-old boy in Cambodia died from bird flu after being exposed to sick poultry in his village. Those deaths follow quickly on the heals of a 39-year-old Chinese bus driver dying on December 31 just outside of Hong Kong. And a 24-year-old man and five-year-old toddler in Indonesia also reportedly died from the bird flu this year.

The WHO says that makes 343 deaths from 582 cases of bird flu since 2003 when the virus first began hopping from birds to people.

But now growing fear over the necessary research to better understand this pathogen, which has a 60 percent mortality rate, is forcing bird flu scientists to take a 60-day break.

Researchers studying a more deadly version of the H5N1 virus that can be spread through the air voluntarily suspended their research for two months after bioethicists raised concerns of the virus being turned into a bioweapon.

Electron Micrograph of the H5N1 Influenza Virus

This deep concern began in late December when a U.S. federal government scientific advisory board asked two peer-review journals not to publish the papers if they explained how they were able to genetically modify the current, naturally-occurring strain of bird flu. The government scientists made the virus even more deadly by making it airborne.

Just days after that announcement and before the papers could be published, government advisers demanded the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to keep the information from falling into the wrong hands.

The scientists who created the deadlier H5N1 in the lab say they needed to know if the current strain has the potential to mutate into an airborne one. It does. They just sped up the process. Knowing that key piece of information will allow countries to take more severe measures to eradicate the newly emerging illness.

Now the story about bird flu has mutated as well, raising concerns that the manmade strain of the virus is now a bigger threat than the naturally-occurring one, which seldom hops from poultry to people.

In a letter that appeared in both journalsScience and Nature, several key bird flu researchers explain why they are temporarily halting their research.

The principal investigators at the labs where the bird flu research is being conducted say that perceived fear of the new manmade strain of the flu virus escaping the lab is making them push the pause button for 60 days.

Drs. Ron Fouchier, Adolfo García-Sastre, Yoshihiro Kawaoka and 36 others recognize that they and the rest of the scientific community need to more clearly explain the benefits of bird flu research and reassure the public that the biosafety measures taken minimize its possible risks.

They say, “We have agreed on a voluntary pause of 60 days on any research involving highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 viruses leading to the generation of viruses that are more transmissible in mammals.”

The controversial research that prompted government warnings and the voluntary research suspension centered around ferrets. The researchers proved that viruses possessing a haemagglutinin (HA) protein from highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza viruses can become transmissible in ferrets.

Scanning Electron Microscope Image of H5N1 Avian Flu Virus

But now the perceived fear of the ferret-infected virus escaping from the secure labs is creating a fear pandemic instead.

They continue, “We would like to assure the public that these experiments have been conducted with appropriate regulatory oversight in secure containment facilities by highly trained and responsible personnel to minimize any risk of accidental release.”

The scientists agree their research is absolutely necessary to help to public health efforts detect when the H5N1 influenza virus might change in the wild, sparking a human pandemic. But Fouchier of Erasmus Medical College in the Netherlands, Garcia-Sastre of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the lead authors on the letter in Science and Nature nevertheless are voluntarily suspending it so public perception can catch up.

Censorship in Science

When a U.S. government advisory panel told the editors of Science and Nature to censor a submitted bird flu paper, the complex issue also enjoined the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The reason for asking for censorship was noble. Biosecurity experts fear an airborne version of the H5N1 flu virus that becomes transmissible between humans could create a pandemic worse than the 1918-19 outbreak of Spanish flu that killed between 20 million and 40 million people.

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) made the following recommendations about the publication of two papers submitted on the highly pathogenic avian influenza, H5N1:

1. Neither manuscript should be published with complete data and experimental details.

2. Conclusions of the manuscripts be published but without experimental details and
mutation data that would enable replication of the experiments.

a) Text should be added describing: 1) the goals of the research, 2) the potential
benefits to public health (including informing surveillance efforts, pandemic
preparedness activities, and countermeasure development and stockpiling efforts), 3)
the risk assessments performed prior to research initiation, 4) the ongoing biosafety
oversight, containment, and occupational health measures, 5) biosecurity practices
and adherence to select agent regulation, and 6) that addressing biosafety, biosecurity,
and occupational health is part of the responsible conduct of all life sciences research.

b) The NSABB should develop a statement that explains their review process and
rationale for the recommendations. This statement will be provided to the journals to
consider for publication.

c) The USG should encourage the authors to submit a special
communication/commentary letter to the journals regarding the dual use research
issue.

In other words, don’t publish the whole genome and don’t explain exactly how this mutation occurred.

Both journals responded by agreeing to the recommendations in part.

Science writer Carl Zimmer sums it up best. He describes the journals’ response, “In essence, “We haven’t decided yet. It would be nice if you let us know how responsible scientists could get hold of the data.”

Since science is rooted in reproducibility this type of censorship flies in the face of the method.

But the U.S. government does have a history of censoring sensitive science, including the recipe for nuclear fission and fusion. And now the formula for ferret to ferret transmission of bird flu.

Columbia University virologists Vincent Racaniello tells Zimmer the censorship move doesn’t make any sense. He says, “The point of a science paper is to enable others to duplicate the findings. Are we going to set a new precedent, where security matters override the reason for publication? This is setting a very dangerous precedent for virology and biological sciences in general.”

But in the end, the scientists themselves agreed to grudgingly redact contested parts of the papers.

Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands says this type of activity is unprecedented. He believes that public health is best served by making the information widely available. A spokesman for Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, Madison also says the lead author will modify the paper and resubmit it.

Meanwhile the editors of Nature and Science are working with government officials to iron out a “written, transparent plan” for relevant scientists to have access to the critical details of this research, which will likely not make the published version of the papers. Science editor-in-chief Bruce Albersis confident that this all can be resolved in a couple of weeks.

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.

Every few years biologists struggling to understand the evolutionary constraints placed on the largest and smallest of animals happen upon — usually by accident– a new contender. But that little creature then gets replaced by the next littlest critter. The competition goes on and biologists now find themselves measuring the smallest spined animals in tenths of millimeters.

The latest find is a miniature frog that can rest on a dime with plenty of room to spare. He (the males holds the tiny title right now) breaks a long-held theory that the biggest animals (blue whales) and the smallest (this frog or a tiny fish) all are linked to life in the water.

The idea is that the buoyancy of water offers support and helps the largest and smallest animals develop.

The new frogs to the phylogenetic fete reside in leaf litter on the floor of the tropical rainforest in Papua New Guinea. And instead of hatching into tadpoles in water they hop out of their eggs as fully formed frogs.

Tiniest animal, Paedophryne amauensis, Sits on a US Dime

So with discovery of tiny terrestrial frogs, the aquatic extreme theory apparently doesn’t hold water after all.

Chris Austin, the Louisiana State University biolgist who found the frog says, “The size limit of vertebrates, or creatures with backbones, is of considerable interest to biologists because little is understood about the functional constraints that come with extreme body size, whether large or small.”

But he wouldn’t have found the frog if it weren’t for its infernal high-pitched mating call.

In August 2009 Austin and graduate student Eric Rittmeyer were collecting and recording frog mating calls at night. They kept hearing a high-pitched “tink, tink” sound they assumed belonged to an insect.

Austin says the sound was all around them and it took a little while to determine where it was coming from. Once they narrowed the search to a pile of leafs on the forest floor, they grabbed big handfuls of habitat and stuck them into a plastic bag. Then they had the tedious task of slowly and methodically removing all the leaves to find the loud caller.

When he saw a tiny frog hop onto a leaf he knew he’d found the source of the sound. Weighing in at barely nothing and measuring 7.7 millimeters Austin had discovered the world’s tiniest vertebrate, named Paedophryne amauensis.

But that’s not the end of the frog tale.

Indonesian Carp, Paedocypris progenetica, World's Tiniest Fish

Male Anglerfish, Photocorynus spiniceps, Vies for World's Smallest Distinction

During the New Guinea expedition, Austin believes the researchers found about 20 new species species on that trip, including another related frog species that is just a millimeter or two larger and has a different call. The paper announcing the discovery of the tiniest frog appears in the online journal PLoS ONE.

Steven Beaupre, a University of Arkansas scientist and president-elect of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists says he doesn’t put too much stock in this type of record-setting announcement. He says it is far more interesting to view this and similar discoveries as a way to “better understand the advantages and disadvantages of extreme small size and how such extremes evolve. Fundamentally, these tiny vertebrates provide a window on the principles that constrain animal design.”

Whether the tiniest creature with a spine is a frog or a fish is rather inconsequential to biology. But Beaupre says what is remarkable is that “the discovery of two new frog species comes as great news against the background of more prevalent accounts of tropical amphibian extinction.”

Maurice Kottelat, the Swiss scientist who found the tiniest Indoesian carp says, “It is not so interesting to know which is really the smallest. Tomorrow will bring another smallest anyway.”

And his concern is not over who is known as the biologist who found the tiniest animal.

Since the discovery of his tiny fish Paedocypris progenetica in 2006, he says most of the habitat in the peat swamps of Indonesia where the fish live has been destroyed. He adds, “I have a great concern. It is not when will we discover the next smallest, but whether habitats where to discover them will still be there. Or how long will the habitats survive.”

For years, scientists have been talking about the era of personalized medicine. While many preparations are underway, the biggest hurdle to widespread adoption has been the prohibitive cost to read a person’s entire DNA. Our genetic code provides a full road map to preventing and treating disease. We just don’t know how to read it yet.

Since the first entire human genome was sequenced in 2000, the price and time it takes has tumbled into affordability.

But the entire biotechnology industry has rested on the belief that personalized medicine won’t work until it takes a day or less to map a whole human genome and the cost reaches the $1,000 price point.

Well, 2012 is the year. At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Life Technologies unveiled its latest gadget, a $150,000 high-speed gene sequencer, which allows entire human genome sequencing for $1,000 per genome.

Outfitted with a semiconductor chip instead of tiny microscopes, the Benchtop Ion Proton sequencer is ready to read our DNA fast and cheap. That means this technology will quickly move from the research lab to the doctor’s office where patients will pay a little more than the $1,000 it costs to sequence a full genome.

There are companies already doing some high-speed, fast-turnaround gene sequencing. But they rely on just pieces of a genome, looking for particular markers to identify risk for specific diseases. No company until now has been able to run a full genome for $1,000 in less than a day.

Life Technologies’ Dr. Robert Bennett says, “For the first time, you’ll be able to sequence an entire human genome in a matter of a few hours.”

Immediately following the announcement, the company said that Baylor College of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, and The Broad Institute have signed on as the first three customers of the new semiconducting gene sequencer.

Dr. Richard Gibbs, Director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor says, “A genome sequence for $1,000 was a pipe-dream, just a few years ago.”

Not to be outdone, another company that builds gene sequencers also just announced that its new generation of machine will read an entire genome in less than 24 hours. Illumina hasn’t announced how much it will cost on a per genome basis.

It’ll be a year or so before these lightweight machines will begin showing up in doctor’s offices. But when they do it is still unclear what running a person’s genome will show.

Doctors must first be trained to use the new technology. The power of personalized medicine and the promise of rapid, inexpensive gene sequencing lies in being able to identify genetic mutations to make medicine more effective, reduce drug interactions, improve preventive health and give the patient more information about his or her health.

But this kind of broad ability could also open up a pandora’s box of privacy concerns. Namely, how much of a person’s genetic information should be accessible to insurance companies, which conceivably could discriminate against people with predisposed genetic risks for certain diseases.

Regardless of any controversy, reaching the genome milestone of $1,000 per genome is changing the face of medicine forever.

Richard Lifton, Chair of the Department of Genetics at Yale School of Medicine says, “The technological advances in the new instrument promise to be game-changing for both research and clinical applications.”

If it’s December it’s time to count the birds. For 112 years the National Audubon Society has been documenting the avian world with its annual Christmas Bird Count. The oldest citizen science (and longest running) project now utilizes the bird-spotting expertise of over 60,000 volunteers from around the country.

The task is simple. Go outside and count birds. Then add your observations the massive bird database, doing your part for science.

In Vermont, the annual Christmas bird count is a time to spot snowy owls and other winter rarities. But for biologist Kent McFarland from the Vermont Center for Ecostudies it’s more about familiar favorites like the tufted titmouse.

He says, “I’m really into whats going on over time with the common birds.”

Tufted Titmouse Forages in the Snow

He says, “The tufted titmouse is giving us an indicator here that yeah there is stuff going on across the landscape.”

The Audubon Society has been tracking the species of bird off and on since 1927 so there is a reliable dataset over a long period of time.

McFarland says, “I knew it was going to be an interesting bird to talk about.”

The annual Christmas count continues through January 5. So if you like birds or are looking for a fun family activity, head outside and start counting birds. Taking time to stop and watch the birds is a great way to appreciate nature this Holiday season.

NOTE: There is a $5 fee to participate in the Christmas Bird Count for all field participants aged 19 or older.

Rosie Redfield, at Home in the Lab

The scientists led by a young researcher named Felisa Wolfe-Simon claimed they were able to get Mono Lake bacteria to substitute arsenic for phosphorus in their physiology and even in their DNA. NASA even hyped the work ahead of the paper’s online publication in the journal Science. The press release announced, “an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

However, Dr. Redfield read the paper and immediately knew it was wrong. She hopped online and pointed out the problems in her blog, RRResearch, which contains her frequent musings about life in her lab working with graduate students. On Dec. 4, 2010 she wrote a long post (and one she thought would be read by few,) which set off a firestorm over the arsenic paper.

Since then, she has appeared in the media and at science conferences talking about her post-publication comments of Felisa Wolfe-Simon’s arsenic life paper. This year the journal Nature named her one of the ten science newsmakers of the year. In addition to saying what many other evolutionary biologists thought about the veracity of the arsenic DNA experiment, she also decided to use her blog as an open notebook where she has been busily trying to replicate the original arsenic experiment.

Her documentation of the process is not just fascinating from a technical perspective (which it is) but she carefully crafts experiments to test each question she has about the Wolfe-Simon study, slowly poking bigger holes in what many biologists regarded as a weak experiment anyway. Redfield isn’t concerned whether she is wrong or right. She just follows the science and looks for explanations along the way.

Her writings almost appear motherly and it’s easy to imagine her as a thesis or dissertation adviser to her students. In one post where she recounts her criticisms of the now-infamous biology paper, she admonishes lead author Wolfe-Simon for having sloppy experimental habits.

Within two days of reading the original paper in the journal Science, Redfield saw the flaws in the Wolfe-Simon experiment. She sees scientists making mistakes as just part of the process. But she chastises the all the scientists involved in that research for remaining silent and never correcting the problem.

She says, “Scientists in particular need to be able to admit their errors – we’re working not only at the frontiers of knowledge but at the frontiers of our abilities. Failure to admit we’ve been wrong is a betrayal of the scientific process.”

Since Wolfe-Simon didn’t admit making any mistakes Redfield says she had to prove the findings wrong.

Of the original arsenic research, she says, “Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information. If this data was presented by a PhD student at their committee meeting, I’d send them back to the bench to do more cleanup and controls.”

So after she completed teaching her genomics class in the spring she turned her attention back to the arsenic experiment, which was clearly nagging at her.

On June 1, she outlined her plan of action for reproducing the original Wolfe-Simon experiment. But from the get-go she said, “If I can’t readily get GFAJ-1 [bacteria cells] growing nicely on the phosphate-based version of the medium the paper specifies, I’ll know that I’m out of my depth. At that point I’ll leave the whole mess for someone else to test.”

Her work revolved around two big questions.

Q. 1. Is the approximately tenfold growth difference between arsenic and phosphorus due to the cells’ use of arsenic in place of phosphorus in DNA, RNA and other biomolecules?

Q. 2. Does DNA purified from cells grown with less phosphorus and more arsenic contain significant amounts of covalently incorporated arsenic?

Just before Christmas, she told me, “This is a really simple experiment, a no-brainer,” which originally she thought might take a couple of weeks. It took her six months.

To start her experiment she sent away for GFAJ-1, the allegedly arsenic-loving bacterium on which Wolfe-Simon based her research of Mono Lake in California. (In some science circles GFAJ stands unflatteringly for Give Felisa A Job).

In September, after several months of open experimentation, Dr. Redfield discovered the arsenic-treated bacteria cells only grew when the cells were streaked out on agar plates. When she tried to use a liquid culture medium, she says, “The cells didn’t look so good.”

But for some reason they grew on the agar plates. And when Dr. Redfield fed the bacteria an amino acid she says they grew like crazy. Once she was able to stabilize the cell growth she grew enough GFAJ-1 to analyze its DNA. She wanted to see if the cells were assimilating arsenic into their DNA in place of phosphorus.

Dr. Redfield didn’t think that such a thing would be possible and for decades chemists have concluded the same thing. Yet, That’s what the Wolfe-Simon experiment concluded. Redfield relies on the chemistry which says that the bonds with the arsenic would be so weak that they would fall apart within a fraction of a second. According to the chemistry, she says, “The DNA will just fall apart and the cells will die.”

But she also refutes the Wolfe-Simon conclusion based on biology. Dr. Redfield imagines DNA is like a zipper. She says, “The teeth of the zipper have to be the same size or the zipper will get stuck.” Arsenic is too big to work in place of phosphorus.

After getting the arsenic-laden bacteria to grow, she figured out that the Wolfe-Simon experiment only worked because the agar plates the original researchers used for the cell growth contained a minute amount of phosphorus, which contaminated the experiment by giving the cells just enough to grow.

She says, “I think they used a reagent that wasn’t purified and discovered it had three or four micro molars of phosphorus.” In the paper and in responding to Redfield and other criticism, Wolfe-Simon says that the bacteria couldn’t grow on the little bit of phosphorus on the agar plate. To that Redfield says, “It was lame. I said, ‘Wait a minute.’”

When she did her own experiment, Redfield used reagent grade chemicals and grew her bacteria in arsenate almost to the specified density. When she added just three micro molars of phosphorus she got the same result as the Wolfe-Simon paper.

Once she was able to stabilize the growth of GFAJ-1 cells containing different amounts of arsenic, she sent the bacteria off for analysis at Princeton to see if any of the arsenic made its way into the DNA of the bacteria, as posited by the Wolfe-Simon paper. She expects those results in a couple of weeks.

She says,” I’ve grown the bacteria with and without arsenic and extracted the DNA and sent it off.” Once she gets the DNA analysis she’ll do some more experiments and then write a paper about the whole process.

For the last year Dr. Redfield has helped demonstrate how science can be self-correcting. In the media coverage, experts quickly reached a strong consensus — that the arsenic paper was flawed. And with her open science experiment on a blog, Redfield invited curious colleagues to contribute to the experiment, which was working at the edges of what is known in biology and experimenting in unfamiliar territory.

Unfortunately, many people look to this newsmaking event as an example of how science gets things wrong. Some people only heard the original arsenic life story and missed the vibrant discussion of the research and its correction.

In the process of the hub-bub around whether arsenic is a building block of life one evolutionary biologist with a popular blog said, “Rosie Redfield must be the tyrant queen of science.” P.Z. Myers, the outspoken atheist blogger biologist gave her the title, which she wears proudly.

Through it all, Dr. Redfield has remained very sympathetic to Felisa Wolfe-Simon, the young post doc responsible for the paper about arsenic life. Redfield has not spoken directly to Wolfe-Simon but sent her an apologetic e-mail after an interview she gave appeared more strident than she intended.

Rosie Redfield understands what it’s like to be a misunderstood scientist. For the last 20 years she has focused on how bacteria reproduce. In 2000 her work raised eyebrows when she wondered, “Do bacteria have sex?” She believes they do, despite what conventional biology says.

To Wolfe-Simon she says, “I understand having an exciting, important idea where everyone thinks you’re wrong.” But, she cautions, “You have to do good science; that’s the only thing that will see you through.”

She feels sorry for how this biological brew-hah went down. Despite what Redfield considers an error in not admitting a mistake, she thinks that the other co-authors on the paper were also complicit in not correcting things before they reached publication and public discourse.

Redfield says, “You can be seen to screw up and it’s not a disaster. That’s just science.”

Science writer David Dobbs followed the story since it broke and says Wolfe-Simon is now caught in the fallout from an over-the-top media press of which she is both part author and something of a victim.

Redfield agrees with his characterization of how both NASA and Wolfe-Simon’s mentors and former lab bosses seem to have abandoned her. In a Wired article in September he notes, “It appears they bought and fueled the bus; put bright lights and banners on it; cheered as Wolfe-Simon drove it a bit wildly honking the horn; and have now thrown her under it.”

Redfield says, “Everyone involved made big mistakes. But the big betrayal wasn’t the errors but the failure to admit them.”

And of her new moniker as tyrant queen of science, she says, “Finally the recognition I’ve been waiting for.”

It’s almost Christmas and the value of the gifts of the Three Wise Men is on the rise. For those not remembering the Nativity story the Three Wise Men brought three items, gold, frankincense and myrrh to the birth of baby Jesus. Quite valuable way back when, the three items are still quite rare today.

Boswellia Tree Hangs in the Balance

Dutch forest ecologist Frank Bongers is trying to preserve the fast-disappearing tree that produces frankincense, a tree highly adapted to survive the harsh conditions in Ethiopia. But he says that fires, human encroachment and species are overpowering the dry-land ecosystems.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources includes 10 Boswellia tree species on its Red List of Threatened Species. Eight are listed as vulnerable to extinction.

And Dr. Bongers thinks that the frankincense tree could be 90 percent wiped out in the next 50 years.

He says, “This is a rather alarming message for the incense industry and conservation organizations.”

While frankincense isn’t a major commodity, about 2,500 tons of the Christmas ingredient are purchased in the U.S., Europe, North Africa and China every year.

Bongers is studying the tree’s genetics to better understand its diversity as a means to save it from extinction. One suggestion he has is to stop tapping the tree for its sap after five years.

In another frankincense tree study five years ago, scientists discovered that taking resin from Boswellia trees for frankincense caused them to produce one-third the number of seeds as trees that had never been tapped.

He says, “There’s not a shortage of frankincense, but there’s no regeneration of the forests. There are no young trees anymore.” He also suggests growing saplings in nurseries and planting them where they are safe from fire and animal grazing.

While it would be sad to lose an entire tree species to extinction, Christmas will still have gold and myrrh.

The focus of Lee Cronin’s work is understanding and controlling self-assembly and self-organisation in chemistry to develop functional molecular and nano-molecular chemical systems; linking architectural design with function and recently engineering system-level functions.

Lee Cronin's Lab Searches for Inorganic Building Blocks of Life

In other words, the 38-year old organic chemist started with the very predictable inorganic molecules as a basis to build nano-machines. Somewhere in the process he began to create self-assembling structures that also began to self-oranize and to evolve. He was on his way to creating inorganic life.

In the process he has created large inorganic, metallic cells from polyoxometalates assembled into bubbly spheres. These non-biological cells let chemicals in and out of their membranes. Some have been taught to photosynthesize.

First Inorganic Cell, iCHELL

And Cronin says, “What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving, inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology.”

He tells the BBC, “The grand aim is to construct complex chemical cells with life-like properties that could help us understand how life emerged and also to use this approach to define a new technology based upon evolution in the material world – a kind of inorganic living technology.

“Bacteria are essentially single-cell micro-organisms made from organic chemicals, so why can’t we make micro-organisms from inorganic chemicals and allow them to evolve?

“If successful this would give us some incredible insights into evolution and show that it’s not just a biological process. It would also mean that we would have proven that non carbon-based life could exist and totally redefine our ideas of design.”

His team submitted a paper on Modular Redox-Active Inorganic Chemical Cells (iCHELLs) to the journal Angewandte Chemie.

In his TED Talk Making matter come alive in July, Cronin says that in his lab he is recreating the famous Urey-Miller chemistry experiment which led to the discovery of amino acids, the building blocks of life in the 1950s.

In 2011, Cronin’s own lab looks like something out of Frankenstein as he sends electricity through bubbling flasks filled with chemicals trying to find similar inorganic building blocks of life.

He postulates that we emerged from a primordial soup of chemicals before we had RNA, DNA or proteins. Before we became humans, our genetic makeup had to be contained in cells. Once there it could become self-replicating and evolve into our ancestors and eventually into us.

He is testing this hypothesis in the lab by using an inorganic “LEGO kit” of molecules. Taking the three or four building blocks, he and his team of collaborators in his lab and around the world are aggregating them all together into thousands of large nano-molecular molecules.

These molecules are about the same size as DNA and proteins but they contain no carbon, the element in all living things. The one piece he was lacking was containers to hold the molecules. Much like biology, he needed to make some cells.

So Cronin and his team made iCHELLS to hold these new inorganic molecules.

Once he achieved that over the summer, he began to conduct mini chemistry experiments inside the inorganic cells.

And now he is searching for a way to activate the process of Darwinian evolution within his iCHELLS by getting inorganic molecules to compete with one another.

He says, “Evolution cannot be cut apart. You have to find the fitness function.”

He says if this theory holds true then he will be able to take the idea of the selfish gene — a biological system that wants to survive and replicate — one step further to the notion of selfish matter.

Cronin’s effort to make inorganic matter able to evolve on its own is his way to build a more comprehensive definition of life.

He says, “We are really becoming very close to understanding the key steps that makes dead stuff come alive.”

In 2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began monitoring the Arctic region, creating an annual report card to mark rapid change occurring there. Five years in and the news isn’t good.

The 2011 Arctic Report Card shows that the entire region is changing dramatically. Ice, both on land and at sea, is melting at record pace. That is upsetting the Earth’s albedo, allowing more of the sun’s energy to be absorbed by dark, open water and not be reflected back to space as it bounces off snow and ice.

2011 Arctic Sea Ice Extent, courtesy of NOAA Arctic Report Card

According to the report card, “The 2011 minimum is the second lowest, only 0.16 million km2 greater than the 2007 record minimum.” Overall, the 2011 minimum reached on September 9 was 31% (2.08 million km2) smaller than the 1979-2000 average. The report says, “The last five summers (2007-2011) have experienced the five lowest minima in the satellite record, and the past decade (2002-2011) has experienced nine of the ten lowest minima.”

All of the newly exposed water is allowing atmospheric carbon dioxide to sink into the Arctic waters and it is changing the chemical makeup of the ocean. As a result, the Chukchi and Beaufort seas have lower pH values. In other words the waters are becoming more acidic, which makes it difficult for tiny sea animals that rely on calcium carbonate shells to survive. The higher acid level makes shell formation more difficult.

The report card says, “The increased amount of open water enhanced the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere and the freshening of the upper ocean decreased alkalinity, inorganic carbon and calcium ion concentrations.” The melting sea ice exposed more water to the open air, allowing more atmospheric carbon dioxide to sink in the ocean, making the ocean more acidic. The report notes, “Although CO2 concentration in surface waters in 2010 and 2011 was not as high as in 2008, these waters have continued to be undersaturated with respect to aragonite.” By monitoring the aragonite levels scientists can determine if phytoplankton is having trouble forming shells.

In addition to watching the ocean and the atmosphere change, NOAA also monitors shorter term weather patterns and tracks the impact they have on the Arctic region as a whole. And the last few years, pressure over the North Pole shifted, pushing the coldest Arctic air far south to the United States and Europe while warmer air filtered over Greenland, rapidly speeding up the melt rate of glaciers there.

For the first time, the 2011 Arctic Report Card measured changes in Greenland. As a result of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) switching from positive to negative, caused unusually warm weather during Winter 2010-2011 and last summer. Those weather conditions in turn sped up the melt rate from the Greenland ice sheet.

The report says, “The area and duration of melting at the surface of the ice sheet in summer 2011 were the third highest since 1979.” According to satellite data, the Greenland ice sheet melted to its third lowest point since 1979 when record keeping began. Only 2010 and 2007 exceeded that ice loss.

NOAA principal deputy under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere Monica Medina says, “This report, by a team of 121 scientists from around the globe, concludes that the Arctic region continues to warm, with less sea ice and greater green vegetation.”

Using a familiar image of a stoplight, NOAA classified the five chapters of the report card according to level of change. The findings show that Atmosphere, Sea Ice & Ocean, Hydrology & Terrestrial Cryosphere have experienced significant change while Marine Ecosystems and Terrestrial Ecosystems have experienced some change. No coverage area received a greenlight, meaning little or no change.

The Report Card tracks the Arctic atmosphere, sea ice, biology, ocean, land, and Greenland. This year, new sections were added, including, greenhouse gases, ozone and ultraviolet radiation, ocean acidification, Arctic Ocean primary productivity, and lake ice.

It concludes, “Sea ice and ocean observations over the past decade (2001-2011) suggest that the Arctic Ocean climate has reached a new state, with characteristics different than those observed previously.”

And, “In 2011 there was continued widespread warming in the Arctic, where deviations from historical air temperatures are amplified by a factor of two or more relative to lower latitudes. This phenomenon, called Arctic Amplification, is primarily a consequence of increased summer sea ice loss and northward transport of heat by the atmosphere and ocean.”

It turns out the Dead Sea isn’t so dead after all. Microscopic life is thriving in the super salty environment, according to new findings by a German and Israeli team of scientists. They found new species of life in freshwater fissures in the seafloor.

Fresh, bubbling water containing the ingredients to support life in harsh environments has revealed new types of microorganisms never before seen. Scientists aren’t sure if the organisms have adapted to the salty environment or to the freshwater. Their research in that area is just beginning.

Danny Lonescu from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany led a team of ten researchers who camped along the shores of the Dead Sea and did daily dives to locate the source of freshwater discharge.

They noticed ripples near shore indicating that something was bubbling up. When they dove to investigate they found a set of springs. After analyzing the water in a makeshift lab, they found micro bits of life, which was thought to be impossible in the Dead Sea. Even during the dives, the high salt content in the water burned the divers and forced them to take extra precautions. Prevailing scientific wisdom says that no life can thrive in this harsh, salty environment.

Since the 1930s scientists knew about freshwater springs and algae in the Dead Sea but the conditions made it almost impossible for scientific divers. So few have been able to see what lurks below the surface until now.

Christian Lott, a biologist and underwater photographer on the team says, “The interesting thing is normally the Dead Sea is thought to be dead… but here we have a huge variety of life forms that can exist in [these] adverse conditions.”

He marvels at hardiness of the extremophiles that inhabit the Dead Sea.

Dr. Lott says, “After a week of diving we get burns, we get bruises, our skin is getting bad and these bugs just live right there – they love it, it’s heaven for them.”

Just as the scientists have made this discovery, they are worried that evaporation of the land-locked sea will spoil their find. Every year the Dead Sea recedes by about 3.3 feet.

Dive with Christian Lott into the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth.

The first scientific team to sequence the genomes of 100 one-hundred year olds wins $10 million. It’s the latest offering from the science competition organization, X Prize Foundation, a non-profit designed to spur science and technology by awarding big cash prizes for significant breakthroughs.

Their most famous and first prize was the Ansari X Prize which started the commercial race to space.

Now the foundation is challenging biologists to sequence the genetic code of 100 centenarians in an effort to learn something new about longevity. Is there a longevity gene or are these folks just doing the right combination of eating right and exercising to get the most out of their lives?

Studies of very healthy elderly people show that they don’t eat a vegetarian diet. They are often obese, smoke and drink and get little exercise. Those who study the healthy elderly find there is something inexplicable that prevents them from getting diseases like Alzheimer’s and they just don’t age like other people.

With more people living longer, the new X Prize genomics competition will shed some light on aging and to see if the secret to a long life is written in our DNA.

Dr. Thomas Perls, an Alzheimer’s researcher at Boston University is the director of the New England Centenarian Study, the largest study of centenarians in the world. He is thrilled that Archon Genomic X Prize is focusing on sequencing the genomes of 100 centenarians.

And he is helping the competition find the one-hundred-plus year olds, drawing from his own study which has a minimum age requirement of 105 to participate.

He says, “It’s very hard to get there without some genetic advantages.”

Noted biologist Craig Venter is co-chairing the Archon Genomics X Prize, which will be judged on accuracy, completeness and the speed and cost of sequencing.

He says, “We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness.” This X Prize is merely the first step in revealing the genetic secrets of a long life.

Irving Kahn, oldest living financial analyst

In 1978, he began his own firm, which now manages more than $700 million in assets. He adapts to the changing times and now communicates with friends and clients all over the world via the Internet. BBC News interviewed him about the 2008 financial crisis in 2008.

If you know people like Irving, send them to the Medco 100 over 100. That’s the search to find the 100 centenarians to have their genomes sequenced.

These people could hold the secrets to better health for us all, hidden within our own genetic code. This prize could also unleash the era of personalized medicine where health and disease treatment will vary based on a person’s DNA.

After the healthy centenarians have been selected the teams will race for the $10 million prize, which will be given to the first team that accurately sequences the whole genome of 100 subjects within 30 days for $1,000 or less per genome, at an error rate no greater than one per million base pairs (that’s 98% accuracy).

The human genome contains more than six billion pairs of nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA. Ultimately, the competition looks to usher in a new era of personalized medicine through sequencing the whole human genome to a level of fidelity never before measured.

Kahn, the oldest living money manager says, “I’m at the stage in life where I get a lot of pleasure out of finding a cheap stock.”

With the new twist on the genomics X Prize, science will begin taking stock of healthy elderly people and study their secret to a long and healthy life.

History of the Archon Genomics X Prize
The $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco was originally launched in
October 2006, its purse underwritten by a generous donation from Dr. Stewart and Marilyn
Blusson, challenging scientists and engineers to sequence 100 whole human genomes in 10
days or less for less than $10,000 per genome at an unprecedented rate of accuracy.
In the following years, sequencing technology progressed through multiple platforms, carving
out niche research markets, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Teams originally registered
to compete were not yet able to meet the requirements.

In 2010, Grant Campany, who has 20 years of experience in the life sciences industry, signed on
as Senior Director for the Archon Genomics X PRIZE. A new approach to the competition was
developed by Mr. Campany, X PRIZE Foundation leadership and the competition’s Scientific
Advisory Board, including Dr. Venter, X PRIZE Foundation Scientific Advisory Co-Chair, and
one of the first to sequence the human genome in 2000 and create the first cell with a synthetic
genome in 2010. Recognizing that no single technology was serving medical/clinical
requirements, the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco was revitalized to be more
inclusive, relevant and robust.

Nature has been doing things for billions of years without issue. Over time plants and animals have refined the way they live to reflect the optimal situation given the conditions they have to endure. This is the nature of evolution. The fittest survive but what fit means to nature may be different than our definition. Why is it that when humans came along we thought we could do it better? We forgot that nature has been doing this longer and better than we have.

In her TED Talk on biomimicry, Janine Benyus tells a story of her young neighbor in Montana who is very connected with nature. She says he sees life from his back looking up as he watches the sky, the grass and on one particular day, a wasp nest. Most people knock down the nests before they get very big but Benyus let nature take its course and let the wasps build a big one.

Her young and curious friend asked her, “How did you build that?” referring to the wasp nest. Even at such a young age Benyus says the neighbor boy assumed that she had built this feat of nature. She was saddened by the realization that the boy — like many of us — sees something elegant, artful and highly efficient and jumps to the conclusion that it is man-made.

She says, “Nature’s been doing just fine for 3.8 billion years.”

We just need to remember that and use nature as a point of inspiration to solve our biggest societal problems. And we must learn to crack the natural code.

So far great mathematical minds have discovered a few of nature’s mysteries by observing the repetition of patterns. Spanish artist Cristóbal Vila created this video featuring 3D animation to show a glimpse of what man has learned about the geometry of the natural world. In nature, numbers create beauty, reinforce structure, maximize efficiency and minimize resources. They combine form with function and infuse wonder and a little bit of awe.

Some even see the hand of God in the exquisite creations that nature concocts.

We can and will learn a lot of nature’s secrets if we just stop to take the time to look and listen. Perhaps whenever undertaking a big civic project city planners should begin by asking the question “How would nature do this?”

The Ask Nature project grew out of that notion. Guided by Benyus and her Biomimicry Institute, Ask Nature takes information gathered from E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life and filters out one question that every scientist answers, “What can we learn from this organism?”

The answer? A lot. More than we can even fathom. Just look around and behold the natural solutions to the man-made problems we face.

Benyus says, “What we are doing in a TED-esque way is to organize all biological information by design and engineering function.”

We see the magic of nature through a series of numbers called the Fibonacci sequence.

Fibonacci Numbers

Leonardo Bigollo is a 12th Century mathematician who is also known as Fibonacci. He introduced the concept to western math even though something similar dates back to ancient India.

Fibonacci created the following scenario to demonstrate his idea. Though biologically unrealistic, he used rabbits to explain the system.

He envisions the growth of an idealized rabbit population, assuming that: a newly born pair of rabbits, one male, one female, are put in a field; rabbits are able to mate at the age of one month so that at the end of its second month a female can produce another pair of rabbits; rabbits never die and a mating pair always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every month from the second month on. The puzzle that Fibonacci posed was: how many pairs will there be in one year?

At the end of the first month, they mate, but there is still only 1 pair.
At the end of the second month the female produces a new pair, so now there are 2 pairs of rabbits in the field.
At the end of the third month, the original female produces a second pair, making 3 pairs in all in the field.
At the end of the fourth month, the original female has produced yet another new pair, the female born two months ago produces her first pair also, making 5 pairs.

At the end of the nth month, the number of pairs of rabbits is equal to the number of new pairs (which is the number of pairs in month n − 2) plus the number of pairs alive last month (n − 1). This is the nth Fibonacci number.

Fibonacci Sequence, courtesy of Wikipedia

Fibonacci Blocks, where the squares are successive Fibonacci numbers in length

Fibonacci Spiral, created by drawing circular arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in the Fibonacci tiling using squares of sizes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and 34.

In modern math Fibonacci numbers can be found in Pascal’s triangle, in the sequence of binary strings in computer science, and in a Pythagorean triple.

And the number, similar to the Golden Ratio, can be found widely in nature. It can be seen in the branching of trees or blood vessels in the lungs, in the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, an uncurling fern. Fibonacci sequences can be found in pine cones, the spirals of shells, the curve of waves and the head of a sunflower.

Fibonacci Plants, the rose, the pinecone and the sunflower

We just have to remember.

Jeffrey Smith has written the book on genetically modified foods (GMOs). Now he’s on a crusade to rid the U.S. of unhealthy food hybrids that not even animals choose to eat.

He tells the story of a farmer who was growing corn for his cows. The farmer grew non-GMO corn next to corn that had been modified by Monsanto, a large agriculture company. First, he grew the corn independently and then when it was ready for the big cow taste test he separated the corn and gave the cows a choice of which feed they wanted.

He says that without fail the cows chose the regular old non-GMO variety, AKA corn. He says the cows would approach the modified corn and sniff it before walking out of their way to reach the non-GMO corn trough.

Smith believes that if only humans had the sense of cows, we wouldn’t have any genetically modified ingredients in the food supply. He says, “It turns out there’s only nine food crops that are genetically engineered but they’re pretty widespread because soy and corn in particular are practically omnipresent in processed foods.”

Other countries have banned GMOs. Zambia, Venezuela India and all of Europe are GMO-free. But in the U.S. up to 70 percent of processed foods contain one or more genetically modified food ingredients.

What is a GMO?

A genetically modified organism is an organism that has been genetically altered using engineering techniques. In foods, the most common technique is called recombinant DNA technology, where molecules from different plant species are combined into a single hybrid with a new set of genes.

Some GMOs are transgenic, meaning that they have intact DNA segments or functional genes from another organism inserted into them.

Food expert Elisa Zied is the author of Nutrition at Your Fingertips. She says, “If a food is genetically modified it means that its genes are altered. DNA from one species is inserted into DNA of another species to create a unique genetic combination that doesn’t occur in nature.”

There are only a handful of crops that have been genetically modified. They include corn, canola, cotton, and soy. However, those are the plants whose derivatives are found in just about all processed foods.

In addition, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is commonly injected or fed to cows which then genetically alters the milk they produce. That hormone is often blamed in part for human obesity. After all, the hormone stimulates milk production in cows. Imagine what it does in people.

Food Fight

The big fight over GMO foods was fueled by a single Supreme Court ruling in 1980, which allowed companies to patent lifeforms for commercialization.

California company Calgene began selling the the first genetically modified food in 1994. It was the flavrSavr tomato, which was more resistant to rotting than its unaltered version. No special labeling was required and the FDA took a wait and see approach to new gene-modified foods.

Then came insect-resistant cotton and soybeans that could tolerate a potent chemical herbicide, both in 1996. Then thousands of patent applications poured forth starting a GMO frenzy.

According to the Grocery Manufacturers of America in the U.S. by 2009, genetically modified varieties dominated 89 percent of the planted area of soybeans, 83 percent of cotton, and 61 percent of corn.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is a geneticist and biophysicist who runs the Institute for Science in Society. She says, “Genetic engineering is inherently dangerous, because it greatly expands the scope for horizontal gene transfer and recombination, precisely the processes that create new viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics, and trigger cancer in cells.”

But well-meaning scientists invented genetically modified food crops as a means to common crop problems. GMO plants are resistant to disease and they can tolerate herbicides. They can also become more nutritious when vitamins are added.

However, most anti-GMO activists say the danger far outweighs the benefits and that a worldwide ban on GMO foods must be levied before it’s too late.

The U.K. Greenpeace website calls GMOs an utter disaster. It says, “The science of taking genes from one species and inserting them into another was supposed to be a giant leap forward, but instead they pose a serious threat to biodiversity and our own health.”

The debate rages on and for now GMO is making its way into our grocery stores and our stomachs.

Jeffrey Smith, anti-GMO activist and author of Seeds of Deception says, “I would say 70 to 80 percent of the food sold in the supermarket has some derivative of genetically modified food crops. In addition you have alfalfa, which is used as hay for animals, a little bit of zucchini, crooked neck squash and Hawaiian papaya. There’s also a genetically engineered drug for cows that increases milk supply, but also creates a hormone in the milk that many doctors and scientists think is quite unhealthy.”

No Laws Against GMO in the U.S.

Some consumer advocates estimate as many as 30,000 different products on grocery store shelves are contain genetically modified ingredients. That’s largely because many processed foods contain soy. And, half of North America’s soy crop is now genetically engineered.

Now, 93 percent of soy, canola oil and cottonseed, 86 percent of corn and 95 percent of sugar beets are genetically modified and they are base ingredients in most of the foods we eat and find in grocery stores.

Smith says just nine food crops have been approved for genetic modification but many others have been affected in the process.

Honey - Honey can be produced from GM crops. Some Canadian honey comes from bees collecting nectar from GM canola plants. This has shut down exports of Canadian honey to Europe.

Cotton - Resistant to certain pesticides – considered a food because the oil can be consumed. The introduction of genetically engineered cotton plants has had an unexpected effect on Chinese agriculture. The so-called Bt cotton plants that produce a chemical that kills the cotton bollworm have not only reduced the incidence of the pest in cotton fields, but also in neighboring fields of corn, soybeans, and other crops.

Rice - Genetically modified to contain high amounts of Vitamin A. And rice containing human genes is being grown in the U.S. but destined to treat infant diarrhea in the developing world.

Soybean - Genetically modified to be resistant to herbicides – Soy foods including, soy beverages, tofu, soy oil, soy flour, lecithin. Other products may include breads, pastries, snack foods, baked products, fried products, edible oil products and special purpose foods.

Tomatoes - Made for a longer shelf life and to prevent a substance that causes tomatoes to rot and degrade.

Corn - Resistant to certain pesticides – Corn oil, flour, sugar or syrup. May include snack foods, baked goods, fried foods, edible oil products, confectionery, special purpose foods, and soft drinks.

Sweet corn – genetically modified to produce its own insecticide. Officials from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have said that thousands of tonnes of genetically engineered sweetcorn have made their way into the human food supply chain, even though the GMO crop was approved only for use in animal feed. Monsanto says that about half of the U.S. sweetcorn acreage has been planted with genetically modified seeds.

Canola - Canola oil. May include edible oil products, fried foods, and baked products, snack foods.

Potatoes - (Atlantic, Russett Burbank, Russet Norkatah, and Shepody) – May include snack foods, processed potato products and other processed foods containing potatoes.

Flax - More and more food products contain flax oil and seed because of their excellent nutritional properties. No genetically modified flax is currently grown. An herbicide-resistant GM flax was introduced in 2001, but was soon taken off the market because European importers refused to buy it.

Papaya - The first virus resistant papayas were commercially grown in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas now cover about one thousand hectares, or three quarters of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto, donated technology to Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, for developing a papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

Squash - (yellow crookneck) – Some zucchini and yellow crookneck squash are also GM but they are not popular with farmers.

Cotton seed oil – Cottonseed oil and linters. Products may include blended vegetable oils, fried foods, baked foods, snack foods, edible oil products, and smallgoods casings.

Meat - Meat and dairy products usually come from animals that have eaten GM feed.

Sugarbeets - May include any processed foods containing sugar.

Dairy Products – About 22 percent of cows in the U.S. are injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH).

Vitamins - Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is often made from corn, vitamin E is usually made from soy. Vitamins A, B2, B6, and B12 may be derived from GMOs as well as vitamin D and vitamin K may have “carriers” derived from GM corn sources, such as starch, glucose, and maltodextrin.

How can the public make informed decisions about genetically modified (GM) foods when there is so little information about its safety? The short answer is labeling. But efforts thus far to pressure the FDA have fallen short.

According to the FDA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), there are over 50 new plant varieties that have completed all of the federal requirements for commercialization and are waiting to go into production.

Just Say “No” to GMO Rap, by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

Every year about 10-15 people in the U.S. contract the plague. Just the sound of the world plague sounds ominous. But the illness is much less of a death sentence than it was during the Dark Ages. Now, a quick dose of antibiotics and the plagued person is right as rain.

After completing the first reconstruction of the plague’s genome, scientists have discovered why the Black Death is just an annoying bug to us now. They discovered that the disease itself hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years but we have.

After extracting DNA from dried blood in the teeth of Londoners who died from the Black Death which killed nearly half of 14th Century Europe, scientists reconstructed the genome using only skeletal remains.

Kirsten Bos, a PhD candidate at McMaster University in Ontario played dentist to the plague victims. The anthropologist who specializes in skeletal pathology and infectious disease in past human populations. She then removed 40 teeth from some of the 600 skeletons housed in the Museum of London, drilled into the pulp inside the teeth to extract a black powdery material, which was likely dried blood that contained DNA from the plague bacteria.

And when she was done, Bos returned the teeth, minus a little DNA, to the skeletons at the museum.

While studying the genome of the original Black Death bacteria and the strain commonly found today, the science team discovered astonishing similarity between them. The strain that ravaged Europe, killing 50 million Europeans between 1347 and 1351 and the plague strain today which sickens about 2,000 people each year are almost the same.

Scientists found only a few dozen changes among more than 4 million building blocks of DNA. And they found no discernible reason why the virulent pathogen of yore is so tame today.

Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen in Germany says, “They’re almost identical. Even a mother and a child show more genetic differences than the ancient Black Death strain and modern plague strain.”

In the intervening years, the bacteria has changed very little while humans have changed a lot. Changes in medical treatment, sanitation and economics put people in a stronger position to fight the plague, which is generally passed from fleas on rodents to people or livestock.

The study authors say that the plague was so deadly because circumstances then were different not because the bacteria was particularly lethal.

Scientists also discovered that by being so devastating the plague essentially changed the human immune system. Study co-author Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University says, “It changed the human immune system, basically wiping out people who couldn’t deal with the disease and leaving the stronger to survive.”

Julian Parkhill, a disease genome expert at the UK Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute wasn’t involved in the Black Death genome project but has studied the bacteria. He says, “Getting an effectively complete genome sequence of a bacterium that lived nearly 700 years ago is incredibly exciting.”

Chris Chase, a veterinarian from South Dakota State University says this research has promise for understanding livestock diseases too. He says, “I could see that it could have big effects on cattle diseases that have been with us for a long time, pathogens like brucellosis and tuberculosis, and how they have changed under vaccine pressure from their ancestors. That can that help us to design new vaccines.”

This is the first time a science team has been able to reconstruct an pathogen of this size. Several years ago a team rebuilt the 1918 influenza virus contained in the lungs of frozen Eskimos. The genome of the plague bacterium is much larger than the flu virus.

Genome Sizes:
Black Death — 4,367,867 base pairs
1918 Flu — 582,970 base pairs
Human — 3,000,000,000 base pairs

Base Pair Basics

In molecular biology and genetics, the linking between two bases on opposite complementary DNA strands that are connected via hydrogen bonds is called a base pair (often abbreviated bp).

In basic Watson-Crick DNA base pairing, adenine (A) forms a base pair with thymine (T) and guanine (G) forms a base pair with cytosine (C). In RNA, thymine is replaced by uracil (U).

Some DNA- or RNA-binding enzymes can recognize specific base pairing patterns that identify particular regulatory regions of genes.

The size of an individual gene or an organism’s entire genome is often measured in base pairs because the structure of DNA is usually a double helix. Hence, the number of total base pairs is equal to the number of nucleotides in one of the strands (with the exception of non-coding single-stranded regions of telomeres).

The voice of nature Sir David Attenborough is featured explaining Iceland musician Bjork’s latest venture — Biophilia. It’s part music album reflecting the connection points between sound, nature and technology. It’s an app for iPhones and iPads. It’s a creation generator for fans of Bjork’s music to tinker and play with sound to make an instrumental backdrop for the singer’s powerful a capella voice.

…but much of nature is hidden from us, that we can neither see nor touch. Like the one phenomenon that can be said to move us more than any other in our daily lives: sound. Sound, harnessed by human beings, delivered with generosity and emotion, is what we call music. And just as we use music to express parts of us that would otherwise be hidden, so too can we use technology to make visible much of nature’s invisible world. In Biophilia, you will experience how the three come together: nature, music, technology. Listen, learn, and create. — Sir David Attenborough, intro to Biophilia

This experiment is described as a multimedia exploration mother application, comprising a suite of original music, and interactive, educational and musical artifacts.

The journey begins deep in the cosmos where galaxies form. Fly through homemade constellations that connect to ten songs, each with a different app and activity. The theme song Cosmogony plays as users decide where to begin their experience.

Biophilia Project Moon App

In Moon, Björk explores the lunar cycles and the effect they have on Earth. The song is based on four different sequences played by four different harpists: Zeena Parkins, Shelley Burgon, Sara Cutler, Carol Emanuel.

About the song, Björk explains, “With each new moon we complete a cycle and are offered renewal — to take risks, to connect with other people, to love, to give. The symbolism of the moon as the realm of imagination, melancholy, and regeneration is expressed in the song.”

The sequences of the song repeat, reflecting the lunar cycles.

18-year-old programmer Max Weisel designed the Moon app for Biophilia. The song is constructed in 17/8 time measure, a far cry from the musical standard 4/4 time. For that reason the app features a musical sequencer with 17 musical moons. Change the position of each moon to change the note it produces. Anyone can create a new melody each time which can be played with Björk’s voice.

Biophilia Virus App

In Virus, Bjork tells the love story between a virus and a cell. And of course the virus loves the cell so much that it destroys it. An interactive game in the app challenges the user to halt the attack of the virus, although the result is that the song will stop if the player succeeds. In order to hear the rest of the song, the players will have to let the virus take its course. Taking some artistic license, the cell nuclei will also mouth along to the chorus.

In her song Thunderbolt the Icelandic impresario uses arpeggios, inspired by the time between when lightning is seen and thunder is heard. She also demanded the creation of new instruments in order to properly show the interdependence of nature, innovation and technology. When she debuted Thuderbolt at the Manchester International Festival in June, she used two Tesla coils as core instruments.

Biophilia Crystalline App

Cyrstalline is the lead single on the Biophilia album and it required a new instrument as well. For this Bjork created the gameleste, a hybrid created by combining a gamelan (gong) and a celesta (organ), giving the singer the option of playing the gong remotely like an organ from her iPad. Crystalline tells the story of structure.

Bjork says of the app, “Travel through tunnels and collect crystals to make your own structure of the song.” Each move changes the way the song plays as you pick crystals along the way. Different crystals have a different effect, making the song a living, evolving structure. At the end, each play sees the crystal aggregation they have made and can save and share their structure with others.

The song and app explore structural similarities in crystals and music, using them to express changes between closed and open systems and emotional states in an effort to unify the external and internal worlds.

Cosmogony embodies the harmony of musical and planetary systems. It’s a song inspired by wonder at the cosmos and the question of how the universe came to be. the app acts as the navigation tool to explore the universe of Biophilia in 3D audio by traveling with your fingertips through space.

Bjork Cosmogony Cover

The Cosmogony app also alerts users when new apps are available, by highlighting them within the constellations. It exists to expand on the cosmological and unifying aspects of the mother app function and draws on the lyrics of the song which center around creation myths from different cultures.

Laura Sterritt at Transchordian says, “In this sense, ‘mother’ app takes on an additional meaning by relating to the birth of the universe.”

With her Biophilia project Bjork is embracing technology, collaborating with Apple and National Geographic to break new ground merging music with science to create a new appreciation for both.

Bjork Rocks Science with Biophilia

She tells the Guardian she has a three-year educational tour planned, inspired by Biophilia. The paper reports that in addition to the album, the free mother app and its 10 accompanying song apps, the Icelandic singer is mapping out a string of eight six-week residencies, comprising live performances, scientific expositions, and children’s workshops on nature and music.

Growing up, Bjork says, “My rock star was David Attenborough”. Now the rockstar is helping to reinvent the rockstar, herself.

According to Corey Tate at Spacelab, “The Biophilia experience will have central themes of science, earth, and space; it seems to be at the forefront of the new interactive music cool, with the combination of digital music and interactive experiences on the rise.”

Through 2014, Bjork will visit eight cities around the world, spending a month and a half in each. She will do twice-weekly performances of the album and host scientific exhibitions and classes for students. She says, kids will be able to “try out the instruments on the iPad and write songs and take them home.”

Pee pressure, beer bottle-humping beetles and a wasabi-flavored fire alarm were among the top prizes awarded at Harvard University’s 21st Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a more laid back version of the Nobel Prize ceremony. Nobel Prize laureates present the Ig Nobels to scientists and philosophers who have made legitimate contributions toward the sillier side of science.

Top honors in literature went to a researcher who 15 years ago wrote a paper about procrastination. Waiting a ridiculous amount of time before honoring the man is indicative of the Ig Nobel prizes. His theory holds that even the best procrastinator can successfully execute a complex task if he believes that he is working on it to avoid an even greater task.

Stanford University philosophy professor John Perry says, “To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that’s even more important.”

A Japanese team decided that during an emergency people would much rather be awoken or alerted using a fire alarm that produces the horseradishy smell of wasabi rather than a blaring sound. They won the Ig Nobel Chemistry prize for determining the correct and patent-pending density for airborne wasabi, a feat fit for a sushi restaurateur.

A group from the beer-swilling nations of Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. stumbled upon a species of beetle that is convinced it can mate with beer bottles. And not just a particular brand either.

Male Jewel Beetle Mates with Stubbies

Another Ig Nobel prize went to an international team from Europe, the U.S. and Australia who tested the idea that people with an overwhelming need to urinate make decisions differently. During their full-blattered research they discovered that those in greatest need to relieve themselves actually exhibited the same level of clarity as a drunk person. One of the papers is titled “Inhibitory Spillover.” (PDF) Just don’t hold it and drive.

Finally, the Math prize went to a group of people predicting the Apocolypse, including Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end again on October 21, 2011). They won the prize “for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.”

The Nobel laureates who physically handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new winners:

Dudley Herschbach (chemistry, 1986)
Rich Roberts (physiology or medicine, 1993)
Roy Glauber (physics, 2005)
Eric Maskin (economics, 2007)
Peter Diamond (economics, 2010)
Louis Ignarro, (physiology or medicine, 1998)

Cover Photo: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania and winner of the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

A pioneering researcher was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Monday, three days after dying of pancreatic cancer without ever knowing he was about to be honored for his immune system work that he had used to prolong his own life.

Ralph Steinman, 1943-2011

Cell biologist Ralph Steinman died just three days before he won the coveted science prize. When the announcement was made this morning, the committee held an emergency meeting since Nobel Prizes are given to living scientists. But they decided to award the prize to Dr. Steinman despite his untimely death because the prize was made in good faith while he was still alive. Only the announcement followed his death.

He shares half of the prize with Bruce Beutler who holds joint appointments at University of Texas Southwestern and at University of California San Diego Scripps Research Institute and with Jules Hoffman, a French researcher who is also the form head of the French National Academy of Sciences.

The Canadian-born Steinman made his mark in 1973 when he discovered a new type of cell called the dendritic cell that has a unique ability to activate immune cells called T-cells.

Dendritic Cell, discovered by Nobel Prize winner Ralph Steinman

Both Drs. Beutler and Hoffman made their contributions in the late 1990s. First, Hoffman studied how fruit flies fight infection in 1996. Two years later Beutler discovered similar findings in mice, demonstrating that flies and mammals activate innate immunity in similar ways when attacked by germs.

Gerold Schuler, head of the department of dermatology at the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany and Steinman’s former post-doc, told The Scientist magazine that Steinman’s work is worthy of the Nobel Prize. He says Steinman’s advances, “are now crucial to understanding and fighting diseases, notably for designing better vaccines.”

Mouse geneticist Alexander Poltorak at Tufts University says the work that Beutler does is a rare example of exploratory research. While looking for cell receptors for a bacterial byproduct that produces septic shock, Beutler and his team observed that mice with a mutation in a particular gene were resistant to septic shock, a potentially fatal over-stimulation of the immune system.

That gene happened to be quite similar to the Toll gene which Hoffman had discovered in fruit flies a couple years before.

Poltorak, who was the lead author on Beutler’s groundbreaking 1998 Science paper says, “We didn’t have any hypothesis, and that’s the beauty of it.”

Since then, scientists have reported about a dozen discoveries of various Toll-like receptors in humans and mice, each of which recognizes certain types of microbial molecules.

This research is important because mutations in any of these receptors can increase the risk of infections or chronic inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

Science and art collide (sometimes literally) in Group Intelligence, a new flash mob performance art piece that asks the question, “How did life begin?”

Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta combined forces with the NASA/NSF Center for Chemical Evolution to explore the formation of molecules. But rather than confining it to a petri dish, the group decided to scale it up so that individual people can represent individual atoms.

Group Intelligence requires a lot of space, a lot of people and an MP3 player. Each participant becomes part of the moving pieces that make up the cell, molecules and other microscopic phenomena. Together all the participants synchronize their audio players and begin at the same time, following instructions to guide them through the exercise.

Adam Fristoe, the founder of Out of Hand Theater says, “Once they become public knowledge, once these ideas spread out into the public mind are going to transform the way we think about ourselves as human beings.”

According to the website, Group Intelligence, “While the audience follows the narration, their movements mimic the self-assembly patterns of molecules that created life. The event draws parallels between a mob of people and a pool of molecules: in both, individual behaviors of selfishness or cooperation create a collective intelligence, the very properties that allowed the molecules of early Earth to self assemble to form life.”

It may be the fastest invasion of a slow-moving creature but people in Miami-Dade County are taking care not to mess with the new snail in town.

The east African land snail is making a home in south Florida and causing all sorts of problems. They reproduce at an exponential rate and grow fast. They slime everything they touch, destroy most plants and even eat the stucco off homes to build up their shells.

But the biggest worry for public officials is the health problems the snails pose. They come fully loaded with worms that can pass to humans by just making skin contact with the slow-moving invaders. The worms can get into the brain and cause a type of meningitis that currently has no cure.

So if you are in the south Florida area, steer clear of giant land snails and if you must touch one, use rubber gloves to protect yourself from a serious illness.

Officials are trying to figure out what will best get rid of the invasive pest.

Richard Gaskalla, director of plant industry at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says, “It’s us against the snails.”

Here’s what you should know about these snails.

They grow to 10 inches long and four inches wide and are considered one of the most damaging land snails in the world. They eat at least 500 species of plants, lay about 1,200 eggs a year, and can carry a strain of non-fatal meningitis. They are prolific breeders and contain both female and male reproductive organs. And the little house-eating buggers can live as long as nine years.

The outbreak started on September 16, when two sisters waved down a fruit fly inspector conducting a routine check in their neighborhood. They told him that the snails were everywhere. Since local and national agriculture inspectors were alerted ten days ago they have removed over 1,000 snails from a one-square-mile area of Coral Gables.

Some older residents remember the last time there was a giant snail invasion in Miami. It was 1966. After a boy brought three snails back from a trip to Hawaii, his grandmother released them in her garden. It took ten years and $1 million to eradicate the slimy pest and is the only known giant African snail eradication program on record.

Because they are so destructive, the snails are allowed into the U.S. only with special permits and for scientific research.

For years, scientists have been saying that some of the biggest discoveries in science will come from non-scientists. And now that prediction is showing promise as two teams of online video game players have helped solve the structure for an important enzyme found in the HIV virus.

After medical researchers had repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a class of enzymes called retroviral proteases, they turned to the biology video game Foldit, an online puzzle that has users score points by folding proteins and ultimately helping science make key advances like this. The protease enzyme plays a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and multiplies.

In the hunt for AIDS drugs and a vaccine, scientists are focused on blocking these enzymes but until now they have been stuck, trying to figure out what the molecule looks like.

Foldit was created in 2008 by computer scientists at the University of Washington Center for Game Science in collaboration with biochemist David Baker’s lab.

In the last three years the game has evolved. To piece together the retrovirus enzyme structure, Seth Cooper, the game’s co-founder says, “Gamers used a new alignment Tool for the first time to copy parts of known molecules and test their fit in an incomplete model.”

The puzzle they were working on was called “Unsolved Monkey Virus Protein” and within three weeks two teams had solved the problem, which Dr. Baker then took from the 3-D computer world into the real world.

For the monkey virus problem, Foldit players began with a scientific rough draft of the protease enzyme. During three weeks of play, hundreds of teams and individuals generated over a million structure predictions. And the solution, found by the winning team in 10 days, is nearly perfect. It gives Baker and his colleagues all the information they needed to pinpoint the structure down to almost the last atom.

Postdoctoral researcher Firas Khatib says, “It’s the power of citizen science.”

Before Foldit launched, Dr. Baker’s lab created a program called Rosetta@home which allowed computers to run simulated protein folding while the machines sat idle. It worked much like the SETI@home screensaver. Instead of searching for extra terrestrial signals from space it ran quick simulations of protein folding. It used distributed processing to crunch massive amounts of data but it was all automated. The user could just sit back and watch the process unfold.

Foldit came into being after some Rosetta users suggested that the computer was making wrong assumptions because it could only follow a logical path. And the solutions to these complex proteins probably required some intuition and exploration, two things a computer can’t stomach.

Once Dr. Baker’s lab combined the power of its artificial intelligence with human intelligence he stumbled on a winning combination that could lead to a cure for HIV and other diseases.

Foldit Contenders Group and Foldit Void Crushers Group are the two teams that received co-authorship on the protease structure paper which was just published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

A member from the Foldit Contenders named “Mimi” says, “It is a team thing. Everybody contributes.”

And that’s just the motivation Dr. Baker is using to solve the big biological questions.

He says, “Competitive social interaction is a very strong driving force.”

Video all about Foldit (By the end you’ll want to sign up. It’s infectious.)

Generally modern art exhibits have provocative and pithy titles that don’t say much. Arthur Miller decided his new GV Gallery exhibit in London would take the opposite approach. He wanted to be explicit and challenging as well. After all, he is introducing a new art movement.

The Art & Science: Merging Art & Science to Make a Revolutionary New Art Movement exhibition (running through the end of the month) seeks to raise awareness of an emerging art form called biology inspired art. As a subset of science inspired art, Miller says the goal is to take this movement “into the stratosphere, so to speak.” And, not just in artistic circles, either.

Works by over a dozen different artists draw upon the connection between mind, body and soul. And to do so they collaborated closely with scientists to showcase the beauty of biology and to take advantage of the artistic byproducts that biotechnology has created.

Science and art are often seen as opposite ends of the spectrum but they have a closely enmeshed past.

Leonardo da Vinci told his students to study the art of science and the science of art. Andy Warhol used x-rays in his art portraits. Now new forms of artistic expression such as bioart, biotech art, nano art, net art and fract art are hanging in galleries, dotting office hallways and filling online image galleries.

In this exhibit artist Susan Aldworth has created an neuro-autoportrait using her own MRI images. While these images, which she has reworked by drawing, texturizing and coloring them, only show the artist’s physical brain, she jokes, “You can look INTO my brain but you will never find me.”

Artist duo Ken and Julia Yonetani recognize that watching grass grow is not very much fun. They put a creative spin on this idea with their video installation, Imagine Tree. They took pictures of the cells involved in plant respiration and photosynthesis, called stomata cells, under an electron microscope. They leave their viewers with a simple message–”Imagine no trees breathing.”

A reviewer at The Independent newspaper summarizes the art and science show. She says, “The exhibition forces us to imagine, via our fantasies and fears, the artistic and scientific.”

Arthur I. Miller is an emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at University College London. He is also the author of Einstein, Picasso among other books, and is working on a new book, tentatively titled The Creative Revolution, investigating the new field of science inspired art.

In the catalog for the exhibition Art & Science, he outlines how science and art are being integrated from both perspectives and what is emerging is nothing shy of a cultural movement.

MERGING ART & SCIENCE

By: Arthur I. Miller, May 2011

Science is changing our world and our lives at an ever-increasing rate. But today artists are bringing science out of the laboratory. Nowhere is this more evident than in biology-inspired art which, by its very nature, necessitates collaboration between an artist and a scientist. This is the theme of the exhibition Merging Art & Science.

Once art and science seemed diametrically opposite; but these days some of the most innovative artists are fusing art and science to create a brand new art movement inspired by science. Striving to visualize the invisible and what it will mean to be human in the future, they create images and objects of stunning beauty, redefining the notion of “aesthetic” and of what is meant by art.

Artists and scientists have always tried to fathom the reality beyond appearances, but it was really only with Isaac Newton, and the onset of the Age of Rationalism in the 17th century, that a distinction was made between the two. In the centuries that followed, science and technology were seen as the real pursuit of truth, while art — which had the role of representing people and landscape — seemed like mere entertainment. With the onset of the avant-garde, and of modernity, the two began to merge with greater and greater intensity.

Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso — inventors of the 20th century – were the catalysts. In the very first sentence of his 1905 relativity paper, Einstein wrote that physicists interpreted certain equations in ways that led to “asymmetries that [were] not inherent in nature.” The relativity theory was in response to his aesthetic discontents. Picasso’s 1907 painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which contains the seeds of Cubism, was strongly influenced by his interest in science (X-rays), technology (photography and cinematography) and mathematics (four-dimensional geometry).

As the century progressed, artists continued to look to breakthroughs in science for inspiration. Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2 was central to Kandinsky’s creation of Abstract Expressionism; while in Nude Descending a Staircase, Duchamp reflected Einstein’s notions of movements in space and time. Relativity also influenced the Futurists, a group of dapper young Italians who rejected the static nature of Picasso’s Cubism, and evoked speed, violence and technology of modernity. Dali was inspired by relativity and then by quantum physics in his efforts to represent the passage of time. Mondrian reduced the world to lines at right angles, capturing what he saw as the dynamic nature of the cosmos in equilibrium, while Malevich concentrated on the end of the material world, as represented by the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the universe will eventually run down. In Malevich’s white-on-white paintings, everything disappears.

Merging Art & Science focuses on biology-inspired art, an ancient art form. An early 20th century example, Picasso’s Standing Female Nude (1910) was inspired by the power of X-rays to glimpse beyond the visible: what you see is not what you get. In this case, the inspiration was X-ray photographs taken to diagnose the illness of Picasso’s mistress, Fernande Olivier. Superimposed on a background of planes, her body lies open to reveal pelvic hip bones made up of geometrical shapes: forms reduced to geometry, the aesthetic of Cubism – inspired by modern science.

For some years, the wonders of the physical sciences enthralled artists, particularly relativity theory, with its spellbinding consequences for space and time, and quantum physics with ambiguities that shock the imagination, such as the wave and particle duality of light and matter. And then there was Jungian analysis, couched in mysterious archetypes, with more than a whiff of alchemy.

The 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, with its potential to alter life forms through genetic engineering and to cure diseases, piqued everyone’s attention. It was the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century and more accessible than relativity theory and quantum physics. Metaphors abound for making the new biology understandable and biology is, of course, of more immediate relevance than exotic objects such as black holes, supernovae and Schrodinger’s both dead and alive cat. Artists found they could work in a biological laboratory.

Biology-inspired artists have at their disposal objects that can actually be glimpsed by opening the body or using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or with microscopes. This contrasts with physics, which depends on a visual imagery generated by mathematical models to provide a glimpse of objects such as black holes, whereas observing the heavens with the naked eye reveals only tiny dots of light twinkling as if on a heavenly canopy, a quiescent scene. In biology-inspired art, the object of study can actually be altered by artists who, along with scientists, explore the boundaries between humans, animals and robots. Artists genetically engineer new forms of life, creating them in bioreactors. Their startling experiments on objects that straddle the border between living and nonliving remind us that, in the long course of our evolutionary history, we come from, and are possessed of, organisms other than human.

These days the term “art and science”is on everyone’s lips – but no-one quite knows what it is or where it is going. Does it mark the rise of a new culture in which science and technology will be the driving forces and will even, perhaps, determine the future of culture? Are there similarities in the creative processes of artists and scientists? Can science benefit from art? And can considering these questions bring us any closer to understanding creativity? This exhibit is a step towards exploring these key issues of the 21st century.

The artists in this show collaborate with scientists, and the benefits run in both directions. Thus their creations have that sharp edge, the tension that accompanies creativity.

Susan Aldworth works on the border between philosophy of mind and neurophysiology. She studies the relationship of The Self to the physical brain: “How to define one’s personality and whether it can be physically located.” Among her tools is fMRI.

Artists explore, interpret and reinterpret forms in nature, attempting to discern forms that are successful and find out why. Davide Angheleddu describes his investigations thus: “My artistic production gets inspiration from nature, particularly from nature sublimely described in the book Kunstformen der Nature (Art Forms in Nature) of the German philosopher and biologist Ernst Haekel.”

To investigate further the essence of natural forms he turns to sculpture using digital technologies.
Whereas work in physics-inspired art often tends to be decorative, this is less the case in biology-inspired art. Artists in the laboratory can produce works of interest to scientists. Andrew Carnie states this emphatically: “Art is too important to be left to artists. Science too important to be left to scientists.” Carnie tracks the changing organization of the brain, how it develops and how it is capable of holding memories.

Annie Cattrell attempts to make tangible seemingly intangible neurological experiences, such as pain and pleasure. Using what is essentially a sculptural photocopying, she examines “subtle shifts and rhythms which ceaselessly occur in the natural world and within the body.”

Katharine Dowson has always been inspired by how science and technology can further inform us about the hidden world within the human body, even beyond what we see in anatomy museums. Among the transparent materials she employs in conjunction with laser technology, glass plays a major role because it “is also a major component in scientific discovery, from test tubes to lens, revealing the microcosmic and macrocosmic universe and their visual similarities.”

David Marron has a different take on biology-inspired art. As a paramedic, he ponders the body in death resulting from violence, accident, or natural causes, sometimes in the loneliest of circumstances: “Each work is approached differently but a generalized underlying subject is humanity. Scratching at our fragility and durability, violence and emotion.” Our habit he explains.

Helen Pynor studies flora and fauna with a unique visual language linked sometimes with text. She writes: “I’m fascinated by the mystery of our status as biological beings whose bodies are the repository for experience, language, and a consciousness in and beyond the central nervous system.”

Nina Sellars’ artwork utilizes drawing, photography, installation and state-of-the-art technologies. “In the 21st century, we have become increasingly captivated by technologies for realms that exist beyond what is normally visible,” she writes.

For Stelarc the body is obsolete. His aim is to “deconstruct our evolutionary architecture and to integrate microminiaturized electronics inside the body. [The body is] an extended operational system.” He extends the concept of art onto his own body.

Ken and Julia Yonetani look to the environment for inspiration towards sculptures using ground water salt or sugar. “Our work tries to retrace lines of connections that have been broken or lost, particularly between acts of consumption and the environment,” they explain.

As Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts write: “Wet biology art practices are engaged in manipulation of living systems. [We are] exploring the manipulation of living tissues as a medium for artistic expression.” The Pig Wings project , part of their study of the production of semi-living organisms in which they muse that if pigs could be designed to fly, then what shape would their wings take – goes further. In growing cells for the purpose of exploring the shape of wings on pigs, they explore the aesthetic as well, because purpose-built forms in nature seem necessarily to be aesthetic. Forms having pleasing properties are naturally preferred, just as are beautiful theories in physics.

May we not say that these artists represent the extremes of science-inspired art, like in extreme sports, pushing the envelope of the possible?

Of this exhibition Miller says, “Like cubism, science inspired art is a highly intellectualized art movement in that it draws from many different disciplines as well as exploring the mind and that enigmatic concept, creativity.”

GV Art is a contemporary art gallery which aims to explore and acknowledge the inter-relationship between art and science, and how the areas cross over and inform one another. The gallery produces exhibitions and events that create a dialogue focused on how modern man interprets and understands the advances in both areas and how an overlap in the technological and the creative, the medical and the historical are paving the way for new aesthetic sensibilities to develop.

Wyllie O Hagan is a pair of visual artists working in different media, from silkscreen paintings to film. They became fascinated by Rosalind Franklin, the woman who captured the first x-ray image of DNA, which immediately led to James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA and their Nobel Prize in 1962.

In 2007, the pair of European artists Denise Wyllie and Clare O’Hagan were inspired by Franklin’s unfinished work and also wanted raise awareness of the disease that took her life.

At the age of 37, the British chemist Franklin died of ovarian cancer and was relegated to a footnote in Watson and Crick’s momentous achievement. Though without her crystallographic x-ray image, they would have struggled to figure out the exact double helix structure of the the genetic code.

While artist O’Hagan was deeply involved in their Rosalind Franklin: Discoveries in DNA project she was also diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Unlike Franklin, she beat the disease and still continues to paint and create art today.

She says, “When diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I really wanted to act out in anger, to make a big noise, to shout and scream and say, ‘This disease is just awful, it kills women, listen to what I am saying.’”

Since then the artists have continued to explore the intersection of art and science through additional collections, including a permanent exhibit called Transformations in Science and Art in the Royal Mint building in London. It is a large floor to ceiling banner that stretches 120 feet long and celebrates the life and work of the scientists in the Department of Oncology at University College London and the patients they’ve helped.

They also went on to further explore DNA through art with a series called Art Science DNA.

Wyllie O Hagan told a South Carolina newspaper, “Even without a deep knowledge of science, people respond to the aesthetics of the work.”

Beginning with their discovery of Rosalind Franklin’s forgotten place in science history, these two women stumbled into the world of science and expressed themselves through their artwork. They began by representating Franklin’s famous Photo 51 in vibrant colors, unlike the fuzzy x-ray original she took in 1952. Since that experiment Wyllie O Hagan has continued to demonstrate a keen ability to capture the beauty and magnificence of science.

“In my view all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall succeed in our aims; the improvement of mankind.” — Rosalind Franklin

Starting in a couple of years you may be able to let out a big sigh of relief that medical diagnostics are moving away from needles and other invasive ways of figuring out what’s going on in the human body.

New technology that takes detailed readings from our breath are already being tested to determine whether an infection is viral, fungal or bacterial. Heart and cancer patients are also benefiting from such advances.

Even with the proliferation of medical technology in the last decade most patients still have to go to unwieldy machines or send tissue samples collected to labs with similar unwieldy machines. But lab-on-a-chip novel technologies are reducing the size of medical equipment while improving the ability to diagnose with greater accuracy.

In just a few years the advances will make most of the diagnostic equipment handheld. A doctor may have you blow into what looks like a large remote control and then all sorts of information can be gathered by the breath you exhale.

A new non-invasive disease detection facility, developed by the University of Leicester, has just been unveiled.

Students at Leicester University teamed up with researchers from emergency medicine, physics and astronomy, engineering, IT services – among others – to pool their knowledge and resources and create the Star Trek inspired unit.

The new facility is designed to detect the “sight, smell and feel” of disease without the use of invasive probes, blood tests, or other time-consuming and uncomfortable procedures.

Scientists from different disciplines worked closely with new technologies and figured out how to use them to examine patients. Their goal was to combine existing diagnostic tools to create a futuristic hospital bed where everything comes to the patient.

Leicester Royal Infirmary's Star Trek Inspired Sick Bay, courtesy of UKPA

The team from the Chemistry department focused on analyzing a patient’s breath.

Budding astronomers used imaging technology from the Mars rover to search for signs of disease on the surface of a patient’s body.

A third group peered inside the patient to measure blood flow and oxygenation using engineers and information technology monitors.

Chemistry Professor Paul Monks says that all these different projects were working independently when he and others had a eureka moment, realizing they could combine their efforts.

Dr. Tim Coats, who is a professor of medicine at the university and the head of the accident and emergency department at Leicester’s Royal Infirmary says the sci-fi inspired sick bay will be used to to diagnose a wide range of diseases from sepsis to bacterial infections and even some cancers.

He says, “Ultimately in the longer term we would aim to work towards something like the ‘tricorder’ device seen in futuristic science series like Star Trek. What we are developing so far is more like a first attempt at the medical bed in the sci-fi series.”

Already talking to commercial partners, the tricorder team is hoping to move this type of service into hospitals as well as have it available for emergency services in ambulances.

Leicester space scientist Mark Sims co-led the project. He says that years ago doctors would walk up and down the hallways and sniff out disease. Now there are tools to do the sniffing. This project is aiming to connect those technological advances more easily. He says, “Ten years from now it could be routine for diagnostic technology to be combined in this way.”

But for now, it’s another sample of science fiction breathing life into science fact.

It’s not your average Top 10 list. In fact there are a lot more killer creatures on adventurer Steve Backshall’s World’s 60 Deadliest Animals list. And he is traveling the world in search of the creative ways critters kill each other.

The Nat Geo Wild channel airs the show, which follows Backshall around the world. He gets nipped by stellar sea lions before a pod of killer whales comes to interrupt the party. He gets punched by a mountain gorilla and pokes an alligator. Obviously, he doesn’t recommend trying anything he does at home.

But some of the cousins to the creatures he examines can be found right in our own backyards including, skunks and killer bees.

As he says, “If you are a small animal then yeah everything else wants to eat you.” He decided to go head to head with the top predators to show the purity and majesty of nature. But it’s likely the many close encounters he has had with some of the deadliest that inspired the show in the first place.

Steve Backshall with Jessica the Hippo in South Africa

Steve took a video camera and moved to the jungle of Colombia where he wrangled snakes and ultimately became National Geographic’s Adventurer in Residence after selling his video to them. From there he began traveling the world on expeditions which led to a couple of other wild animal shows, including a stint at the BBC.

Some of his career highlights — sharing a beach with 75,000 nesting olive ridley turtles, having a baby mountain gorilla take him by the hand, and having a red-eyed tree frog leap into his face on camera. He has scaled jungle mountains only to explore giant sinkholes and he has discovered never-before-seen creatures high atop a craggy Venezuelan mountain. The list goes on an on and on.

According to the his Deadliest 60 bio, “He’s been squirted with ink by Humboldt squid, flirted with by tarantula, assaulted by giant arapaima fish, stared out by thresher and great hammerhead sharks, mugged by pink river dolphins, and charged by elephants, but still maintains that wild animals pose no threat to people.”

But he started out as an English and Theatre (he’s British) major who moved to Japan to become a black belt in Karate, teach English and work as a model. Soon after he began writing for the Rough Guides travel book series before finding his niche as a television adventurer.

For those not looking for more than arm-chair danger this weekend, there is a World’s 60 Deadliest marathon on Labor Day on Nat Geo Wild.

According to a new study it could take 1,200 years, 300,000 researchers and $364 billion to identify and catalog all the species on Earth.

New research in the online journal PLoS Biology, a publication of the Public Library of Science uses a new way of calculating just how many plants and animals inhabit Earth. So far of the estimated 8.8 million we have discovered just 1.9 million.

Recent discoveries have been small and weird. They include a psychedelic frogfish, a dime-sized lizard and a blind, hairy lobster found on the ocean floor near Antarctica. Some scientists are actively searching for species to fill in the big gaps on the species pyramid. Others just happen across new species.

Describing the wild world in which we live biologist and study co-author Boris Worm from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia says, “We are fairly ignorant of the complexity and colorfulness of this amazing planet.”

Scientists from the U.S. and Canada who are part of the Census of Marine Life released the study this week. It found the previous estimate of global species a bit too difficult to pin down. The range of 3 million to 100 million didn’t sit well and researchers have been trying to narrow the number.

Using a new computer modeling method Dr. Worm and Camilo Mora from the University of Hawaii now believe the number to be somewhere between 7.5 million and 10.1 million. Even with the more improved method for counting the study admits it could be off by as much as 1.3 million.

In 1758 Carl Linnaeus built the system that is still used today to name, describe and catalog species. In the 253 years since, about 1.25 million species — roughly 1 million on land and 250,000 in the oceans — have been described and entered into central databases. But there are about 700,000 more species that have yet to reach the central databases. They are sitting in limbo between discovery and classification, many waiting patiently in backroom of major museums like the Smithsonian.

Based on the new way of estimating the number of species on Earth, the biologists estimate there are 6.5 million species found on land and 2.2 million or 25 percent living in the ocean depths. They suggest that about 86 percent of all species on land and 91 percent of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.

According to the Associated Press, evolutionary biologist Blair Hedges from Penn State University says the new study isn’t good enough and could be off by millions. He thinks there are many tiny species lurking in corners of the unexplored Earth. And he should know. In 2001 while rooting around in dead leaves in the Dominican Republic in 2001 he found the world’s smallest lizard, a half-inch long Caribbean gecko. And then in 2008 he discovered a four-inch snake in Barbados that lays a very long egg.

Who Cares?

Scientists don’t want to classify every living creature on Earth just for the sake of saying they did it. They are trying to identify new species which could potentially have benefits for humans, ranging from medicine to climate adaptation.

Famed biologist E.O. Wilson says undiscovered species need to be found before they disappear taking possible cures with them. He says, “We won’t know the benefits to humanity from these species, which potentially are enormous.”

In order to advance medical and other science he says we need to know what’s in the environment.

Dr. Mora says, “Many species may vanish before we even know of their existence, of their unique niche and function in ecosystems, and of their potential contribution to improved human well-being.”

Lord Robert May, a past president of the British Royal Society praised the new system for estimating species numbers. He says, “It is a remarkable testament to humanity’s narcissism that we know the number of books in the U.S. Library of Congress on 1 February 2011 was 22,194,656, but cannot tell you — to within an order-of-magnitude — how many distinct species of plants and animals we share our world with.”

But fledgling projects like the Census of Marine Life and the Encyclopedia of Life are trying to speed the process given that human activity appears to be hastening the demise of habitats that could contain undiscovered species.

If the 8.8 million number is right, Erick Mata says, “Those are brutal numbers.” The executive director for the Encyclopedia of Life says even with an accelerated rate of discovery, “We could spend the next 400-500 years trying to document the species that actually inhabit our planet.”

Do Something that Counts

The International Union for Conservation of Nature monitors 59,508 species and classifies 19,625 as somehow threatened. Right now this is the most sophisticated system for monitoring known species and it is only looking at about one percent of the entire list.

That’s where citizen scientists come in. Scientists believe that some of the yet-to-be-discovered species could be found in our own backyards.

What will you do to help find, describe and catalog species that scientists discover?

A meta-study in the journal Science says – changing global temperatures are pushing species towards the poles and higher altitudes.

A meta study is a study that rounds up all the other related studies (in this case 54) and analyzes them for trends or patterns that emerge. After looking at the scientific literature on species migration for the last 40 years, it appears that animals and plants are responding to a changing climate by moving further north and to higher elevations.

While it may sound strange that trees are picking up and moving in essence that’s what’s happening. Of course, they can’t uproot themselves and walk up a mountain or further north to a more suitable climate. But researchers have found that 2,000 species of plants and animals are finding new homes thanks to climate change.

And the rate at which the they are moving to a more suitable climate is staggering, much faster than the commonly accepted rates found in the scientific literature.

Chris Thomas, Biology professor at the University of York in England and the meta study project leader says, “These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the equator at around 20 centimeters [8 inches] per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year.”

That’s a rate three times faster than scientists thought plants and animals were migrating because of climate change. That amounts to a shift of 10.1 miles to the north per decade. And species are moving higher up hills and mountains as well at a rate twice what scientists thought. On average species are moving at a rate of 36.1 feet higher per decade.

While it may not sound like a lot of movement Dr. Thomas says that there is no other explanation why plants and animals would be permanently shifting their habitats to higher latitudes and higher elevation. He also says the speed at which the change is occurring is very dramatic.

I-Ching Chen, another lead researcher on the meta study says this project shows that global warming is pushing plant and animal species toward the poles and to higher elevations. Dr. Chen says, “We have for the first time shown that the amount by which the distributions of species have changed is correlated with the amount the climate has changed in that region.”

This analysis of the literature spells trouble for animals in Arctic regions where the climate is warming twice as fast as anywhere else. There is nowhere for these species to go. The same holds true for plants that are already perched on mountain tops. They can’t climb any higher.

Dr. Thomas and other scientists fear that many of the species that are unable to adapt by shifting their homes will simply die out.

The meta study focused on the scientific literature in Europe and North America, leaving a gaping hole in what’s happening in equatorial regions, where temperatures are warming much more slowly than higher latitudes. In the tropics moisture not temperature may be having the same overall effect on species. That’s the subject for another meta study.

And while the overall trend pointed toward a warming world forcing the migration of plants and animals toward the poles and to highter elevations, a significant minority of species moved to lower latitudes and lower elevations. Dr. Thomas attributes this to other pressures that have an effect on species distribution. Habitat loss, land use, and other pressures besides climate change do have an impact on species movement.

He told the New York Times, “Land use change, habitat loss — there’s a long list of pressures which must all be balanced. Climate change is a huge pressure, but it’s just one pressure facing species around the world.”

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)

Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are sending back new and exciting pictures for NASA scientists to study.

Scientists believe dark finger-like streaks in the soil on Mars indicate underground, seasonal liquid water streams. It’s not definitive proof that water exists in a liquid form on Mars but it is encouraging news for those hoping to find signs of life on the red planet.

What puzzles astronomers and astrobiologists most is that no NASA sensors have picked up the chemical signature for water. But that may be because there isn’t a lot of it and the thin Martian atmosphere makes it hard to detect once it reaches the surface.

It will be several years before a Mars rover will be able to probe beneath the surface and see if there is flowing water on our planetary neighbor.

Until then encouraging photos of dark streaks that seem to ebb and flow with the seasons will have to keep Mars life hunters happy.

“NASA’s Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form, and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration.” — Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator

In 1978, Charles and Ray Eames, the husband and wife duo who are known for their mid 20th Century furniture, movie making and other design projects, decided to map the visible world.

Their film, Powers of Ten showed the perspective of moving one order of magnitude every ten seconds. Beginning with a picnic in a park in Chicago, the clever team shows the vastness of the universe, reaching toward the furthest point of our understanding at 10 to the 24th meters.

Then a quick two-second per power return to the picnic before plunging into the microworld beneath the skin of a picnicker and into the subatomic world of electrons and their component parts.

Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Charles and Ray Eames, is the curator of the Eames Office and has recently launched the Powers of Ten website where he placed an interactive journey of each step shown in the film.

In 2007, to mark the 100th Birthday of his grandfather, Charles, Eames paid a loving tribute to the creative genius of his grandparents.

We all know that dolphins are smart. And we know they have more senses than people, adding echolocation to the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Now scientists have tested and confirmed a seventh sense in at least one species of dolphins.

The Guiana dolphins, which live in the muddy coastal and river waters of South and Central America, have the ability to sense electrical fields. Sharks possess the same bioelectric capability but theirs is much stronger than dolphins.

Scientists made this discovery after ten years of study. When the studied little pits around the dolphin beaks where whiskers used to grow, they discovered they were not useless vestigial features but contained nerves. Eventually, researchers found that the vibrissal crypts are key sensing organs.

German biologist Wolfe Hanke from University of Rostock led the team that made the sensory discovery. He says, “We were really surprised to find this in the dolphin. Nobody had expected it.”

To test the theory, marine biologists trained a dolphin to place its head on a rest station where electrodes delivered a tiny electrical signal in the water. If the signal was present the dolphin would receive a reward for swimming away and if there was no signal the dolphin would be rewarded for staying at the rest station.

When researchers covered the vibrissal crypts to block the signal, the dolphin could no longer perform the task accurately, leaving scientists to conclude that the little snout craters are keen bioelectrical sensors that help Guiana dolphins find prey by mapping out the weak electrical signal given off by fish.

This discovery makes dolphins the first mammals to have this special sense, called electroreception.

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.”

Psychologists have learned that the Internet is becoming a primary form of transactive memory, meaning the information is external or stored outside of the person.

For some it is becoming far easier to reach for a keyboard than to try to extract a piece of information from the brain. Google and Yahoo! are among the first words people in a new study thought of when asked a trivia question.

Researchers say that rather than knowing the answer to a question we are learning how to seek the answer and fast. Over the last few decades intelligent quotients have been gradually rising but many people don’t feel any smarter.

But the research from Columbia University finds that the Internet is already changing the way we remember. Betsy Sparrow asked a bunch of trivia questions (including, which Best Picture nominee lost the Academy Award to Gone with the Wind in 1939?)

She is studying memory, specifically types of external memory, ranging from other people to the Internet. In this study, Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips, which is published in the current issue of the journal Science she looked at whether people think about their computers when they don’t know the answer to something.

She says, “We found that they do. Secondly, we found that people when they don’t expect to have access to information later remember it better than if they do expect to have that access.”

Before the Internet, we still relied on outside resources to find information. We called them other people. Other research shows that after the death of a spouse or even divorce, some people experience memory loss because they have lost their partner, a memory resource.

Now we are offloading much of the information we used to hold in our working memories and shifting to create memories of how to access the information rather than the information itself.

“We also found that people tend to prioritze where to find things over the things themselves, which is adaptive in this case I think.” — Betsy Sparrow, Columbia University

Is this part of our natural evolution or is technology driving the change? Please leave your comments below.

Biologists from the California Academy of Sciences and its counterpart in the Philippines have found over 300 new species of animal life, both on land and in the sea.

Ranging from a starfish that only eats sunken driftwood to an inflatable shark, scientists say that over 90% of the world species have yet to be discovered.

But the purpose of this expedition of discovery to the Philippine island of Luzon was to find unique habitats and species in an effort to preserve land that is being rapidly developed and to expand protected marine sanctuaries.

Using sophisticated DNA sequencing and old-fashioned looking under a microscope, scientists will compare the new candidate species to vast databases of existing species to see just how many are really new to science.

Terrence Gosliner, the head of research collections at California Academy of Sciences says, “The Philippines is one of the hottest of the hotspots for diverse and threatened life on Earth.”

On a six-week expedition this spring, biologists hiked through the land and dove beneath the waves in search of new species. Despite being known for its rich biodiversity, the area is relatively unstudied. The Philippines is one point of the Coral Triangle, an area rich is sea life biodiversity stretching from Indonesia to New Guinea.

For all the scientists involved in the project, the most shocking revelation was the amount of garbage the teams found. They repeatedly said they found more trash than life. Divers even found barnacles that had apparently adapted to an underwater plastic environment. Even in 6,000 feet of water, they found plastic coating the ocean floor.

According to MSNBC.com’s Alan Boyle, “Among the suspected new species are dozens of types of insects and spiders, deep-sea corals, sea pens, sea urchins and more than 50 kinds of sea slugs.”

Scientists say they also came across a new kind of cicada that makes a distinctive “laughing” call.

In addition to protecting as yet undiscovered species from extinction before their existence is recognized, many species, including several sea slugs have been identified as key ingredients in future commercial drugs. Other species hold unknown solutions to problems we can only just imagine, which makes protecting biodiversity a key goal of this project.

Poisonous Sea Urchin in Philippines, photo by Terry Gosliner

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.

Common, everyday things, from construction material to household items or even insects, look remarkably different up close. And the up close that a new art exhibition has in mind is mind-boggling.

Using a high-powered scanning electron microscope a scientist and a graphic designer combined forces to show the microworld in a new exhibit, called Science + Art: Bridging the Gap. By magnifying concrete, sandpaper, bugs and other familiar items in our environment 300,000 times, abstract images emerge, showing magnificent and naturally beautiful works of art.

Center for Applied Science and Engineering senior scientist Rishi Patel and designer Jeff Rawson created an 18-piece exhibit which is on display now through early August in Springfield, Missouri. Patel, a microscopy expert created the images, which start out as black and white. Then Rawson overlayed them with color, giving them an artistic flair and greater depth. He also mounted them on canvases to complete the aesthetic picture.

Patel says, “As part of our outreach program to the community this seemed to be a good way to show people a new perspective of ordinary objects that they would not have seen before.”

Rawson Told the Springfield News Leader, “In our work at JVIC, we’re committed to tying the arts and sciences together.” He says, “This is something I’ve always kind of played with in my spare time.”

But the project started as a simple way to add a few images to the JVIC website and grew into a community-wide exhibition, which opened last week.

Patel says, “The interactive nature of the exhibit where people had to guess what they thought the object was, I think made it a more enjoyable experience.”

And, judging by the opening night response, he says the duo will make more artsy science images using a scanning electron microscope. Now they just have to decide what to scan. Post your suggestions below.

Etched Stainless Steel under a Scanning Electron Microscope, all images courtesy of Jeff Rawson's Science + Art: Bridging the Gap

All images are also for sale, from $200-$500. For more information visit Springfield Arts Council.

Crows have a remarkable way of remembering people — especially ones they think have wronged them. And now new research shows they pass on this scolding behavior to other birds so the grudge can carry on, sometimes for years.

University of Washington bird biologist John Marzluff discovered about five years ago that crows can recognize a person who poses a threat. By wearing a scary caveman mask, the bird researcher walked around campus scaring crows. He quickly discovered that not only did the offended birds remember him but they told their crow friends.

That’s how he discovered the crow behavior called mobbing when a large number of birds gather to caw menacingly — just like in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Jim and Renee Ha, also from University of Washington, have been studying corvids — crows, blue jays and similar birds — for a long time. They are noted for the their extensive research of the Mariana Crow, a severely endangered bird that occupies a small island near Guam.

They were also among the first biologists to discover that crows are very smart. In Japan crows have adapted to urban settings by using cars to crack hard nuts.

The Has also found that crows can recognize their relatives and distinguish them from other birds.

So it comes as no surprise that crows can hold a grudge.

Jim Ha says, “Crows are just really smart, capable birds. They’re right up there with your dog.”

Last month, police officers in Everett, WA — about 35 miles north of Seattle — were mobbed by crows, which cawed loudly and dive bombed the cops.

Lt. Bob Johns says the angry birds are “like velociraptors” and when they cornered him he “got zinged.”

When Alex de Voogt couldn’t get a crumbling sheath to release an early 20th Century Egyptian knife, he turned to a cutting-edge, high resolution, computed tomography (CT) scanner for help. Using the advanced x-ray technology he was able to see inside the knife covering and reveal writing on the knife blade without disturbing the artifact.

Museum scientists around the world are continually studying parasites, people, or planets. And to learn more about their subject of choice, they routinely use cutting-edge imaging technologies such as infrared photography, scanning electron microscopes, and CT scanners to make it possible to examine details that were previously unobservable.

Now the American Natural History Museum in New York City is offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of science as told through the pictures scientists capture in pursuit of their science.

This exhibition, called Picturing Science was the brain child of Mark Siddall, curator in the museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology. He gathered more than 20 sets of large-format images that showcase the wide range of research across many different scientific disciplines being conducted at the Museum. The exhibit also showcases how various optical tools are used in scientific studies.

Picturing Science: Museum Scientists and Imaging Technologies is on exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History from June 25, 2011 – June 24, 2012 and is free with Museum admission.

“Very rarely do you find a scientific paper that doesn’t have a picture in it, a scientific figure of some sort. But there’s this wonderful aesthetic that goes with some of these pictures that are just beautiful to look at.” — Mark Siddall, Invertebrate Zoology Division Curator, American Natural History Museum.

The eyes have it.

A couple of years ago former Baltimore Orioles coach Buck Showalter appeared on ESPN during a Baseball Tonight segment called Scouting the Body, all about what recruiters look for physically in an ideal baseball player. He pointed out that the best players have brown eyes. While there are great green and blue-eyed players, Showalter says, “Scouts don’t like to see hitters in a perfect world have anything other than brown eyes.”

In the last couple of weeks the very blue-eyed Texas baseballer Josh Hamilton began using special contacts to improve his daytime batting average. He blames his eye color for the disparity between his day and night time batting averages. And, now doctors are backing up that theory.

Dr. Richard L. Ison is the Hamilton’s optometrist outside of Dallas who agrees that light-eyed people have more difficulty deflecting glare. This is especially true for baseball players.

Dr. Ison says, “”Because of the lack of pigment in lighter color eyes, like blue or green eyes as opposed to brown, you get a lot more unwanted light and that can create glare problems.”

The phenomenon is called intraocular light scatter or straylight. According to several eye studies light transmittance through the iris is higher in light-blue-eyed people than in dark-brown-eyed people. Many eye doctors think that different eye colors influence straylight by reflection from the fundus oculi. A retinal pigment epithelium in the fundus oculi absorbs light and to prevent light scattering. In dark-eyed people, the color of fundus oculi is brownish-red in it is orange in light blue-eyed Caucasians.

So there is real science to back up Hamilton’s claim. While blue-eyed people may be more predisposed for sensitivity toward bright light because they scatter more light than they absorb, is this why Hamilton’s daytim batting average is one-third of his nighttime average?

Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs.com says unequivocally no. After first hearing of the Hamilton story, he asked his audience to help him crowdsource all the blue-eyed baseball hitters and run their averages to see if this was a real trend. He was quite impressed with the rapid response which allowed him to quickly conduct his experiment using a sample size of 25 players with blue eyes.

He says, “The sample of blue-eyed players we looked at follows the trend established by the rest of Major League Baseball.”

After looking at batting averages for 47,000 daytime appearances and 100,000 nighttime games, he found the blue-eyed baseballers hit just about the same during the day and during the night.

He says, “This non-difference matches up with the rest of the population, as there is no consistent historical day/night split for Major League hitters over the years.”

Among his sample of blue-eyed batters, Cameron says they split evenly, with 13 hitting better during the day and 12 hitting better at night.

One of the players Cameron singled out was Mark Grace, a blue-eyed former Chicago Cub. He says, “Grace is perhaps one of the most interesting cases, as his eyes are very blue and he spent the majority of his career with the Chicago Cubs, who play more day games than any other franchise in baseball.” Yet Grace collected the most hits (1,754) in the 1990s.

Calvin D. Esbaugh told MSNBC.com “The deal is, if someone has less pigment in their iris, they could potentially be more sensitive to sunlight.”

After wearing contacts that tint his eyes red, Hamilton reports that his daytime vision is better, making it easier to hit the ball. He says the glare from home plate and the brightness of the ball are not as bad as they were.

Cameron says, “Maybe Hamilton is the outlier here. Maybe his eyes are especially sensitive, and he’ll sustain a large day/night split going forward. It seems more likely, however, that we’re just looking at noise generated by looking at a sample of fewer than 600 career plate appearances, and Hamilton was looking for a reason to explain something that goes beyond randomness.”

More than straylight, Hamilton may be suffering from photophobia, or light sensitivity.

Dr. Esbaugh says, “Although not every blue-eyed person would be equally affected there are other factors involved in light sensitivity besides eye color, such as the density of rods and cones — the light receptors — in your retina.”

A blogger known as Baseball Guru says, “Mickey Mantle and George Brett both had blue eyes, and both performed slightly better during the day. While optomotrists have sided with Hamilton and said that it is true, I am a skeptic and not a believer, for the Mickey Mantle and George Brett reasons.”

As of Wednesday afternoon officials said 17 people had died in Germany and one in Sweden. A recent E. coli outbreak across Europe is believed to have started in northern Germany but it appears to be causing people to fall ill all around the world, including two cases in the U.S.

The unusually virulent strain of the bacteria commonly found in animal stomachs, including our own, has contaminated fresh vegetables and forced many markets to stop selling cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. At first, Germany pointed a finger at cucumbers imported from Spain but later withdrew the accusation.

Officials are worried that they may never know the cause of the food-borne illness, which has sickened over 2,000 people in under a week.

While e. coli bacterial outbreaks occur periodically from poorly handled produce, this outbreak has health officials and scientists more concerned. For one it is striking healthy adults over age 20 and is causing kidney failure, stroke and some patients to lapse into comas. That makes this much more serious than typical outbreaks which cause gastrointestinal distress for most and are more tend to be more serious for the elderly and children.

Scientists immediately ran a gene sequence of the new bacteria and found it is a new strain of E. coli, which had mutated from two other strains to combine their poisonous effects and become much more deadly.

Hilde Kruse, a food safety expert at the World Health Organization says, “This is a unique strain that has never been isolated from patients before.” And she adds, “Various characteristics that make it more virulent and toxin-producing.”

According to health experts this outbreak is already the third largest, following a 1996 Japanese outbreak and a 2000 Canadian outbreak. And it may be the deadliest.

The new European E. coli strain shows the presence of genes typically found in two different types of E. coli: enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC).

Because many people likely ate contaminated vegetables but didn’t have strong reactions, doctors believe the outbreak may be much larger. Those with mild responses to the bacteria probably wouldn’t seek medical attention. They may stay home from work and recover quickly, thinking they had the flu.

The WHO put information about haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) on its website after most people in Germany developed those two diseases from exposure to the bacteria.

A WHO statement says that as of May 31, nine of the patients in Germany had died of HUS and six of EHEC. It goes on to say, “There are many hospitalized patients, several of them requiring intensive care, including dialysis.”

NBC News reported that according to doctors, two-thirds of patients in Hamburg, Germany, were suffering from severe neurological problems such as language difficulties and seizures.

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.

It sounds backwards; HIV cure leads to treatment. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? In this case, an accidental cure in one man of the debilitating autoimmune disease has given new hope to a new genetically-engineered treatment.

Sangamo Biosciences Inc. is developing a new form of gene therapy driven by the case of patient Timothy Brown who may be the only person that’s ever been cured of AIDS.

Brown received a stem-cell transplant in Berlin in 2007 that transferred genetic material to him from one of the 2 percent of people with natural immunity to HIV, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Feb. 14 issue.

He’s been off treatment since then, and no trace of the AIDS virus has been found in his body, according to Brown’s hematologist.

Here’s Timothy Brown’s story:

Bloomberg’s Shannon Pettypiece reports.

Find out just how incredible the human body is.

How fast do you sneeze?
How much heat does your body produce?
How much blood do you pump?
How many miles of nerves do you have in your body?
How many scents can your nose detect?
How much saliva will you produce over your lifetime?

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?

The 2011 State of the Union address, delivered by President Barack Obama, painted a solid picture of the future. Not surprisingly the President finds a secure and prosperous future filled with scientific and technological innovation. To create more jobs, he stresses better education including concentration on math and science. He emphasizes energy innovation and more investments in basic research. But overall he pressed all citizens to be creative and use their imaginations to conceive a better and brighter future where responsible government is open and accessible to the citizenry and where all people are given the same freedoms and choices.

Here’s a science, technology, engineering and math snapshot of our state of the union. Excerpts from President Obama’s January 25, 2011 speech before Congress and the American people.

Race to be #1 in Science
The U.S. is not going to be able to hold its lead over other nations as long as we lag behind in education and investment in research and technology. During his speech, the President said…

“Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They’re investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.” (13:32-14:00)

Applied Materials Solar Technology Center is the biggest solar research facility in the world. And it’s located in Xi’an, China. Although, Applied Materials is a California-based company, it operates in 21 different countries.

Last fall American parts helped China speed past the U.S. in the computer race. It’s not quite as exciting as the space race 50 years ago but it’s still a mark of status to have the world’s fastest computer. And now that honor lies with Tianhe-1A which has a 2.507 petaflop system. That is currently 30 percent faster than any U.S. machine.

Though the U.S. had a hand in helping China reach these milestones, President Obama called for the U.S. to start innovating. He said…

“We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” (15:59-16:02)

“Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout our history, our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That’s what planted the seeds for the Internet. That’s what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS.” (17:39-18:01)

New Moon Shot
During his speech the President called upon all Americans to dig deep and be creative to help build a stronger economy. He said…

“Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t even there yet. NASA didn’t exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.”
“This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology.” (18:10-19:08)

Ready for the Challenge
The President told the American people that it’s up to the scientists, engineers, teachers and entrepreneurs, not the government to solve the big problems we face. He said…

“We’re not just handing out money. We’re issuing a challenge. We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo projects of our time.” (20:12-20:25)

He added…

“At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars.” (20:27-20:34)

Sossina Haile at Cal Tech is taking a chemical ordinarily used in self-cleaning ovens — called cerium oxide — and is using it to concentrate solar energy in order to turn carbon dioxide and water into fuel. He said…

“At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they’re using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear facilities.” (20:36-20:40)

The Jaguar supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory may have slipped to #2 in the world of speed but it’s still number 1 for many scientists, including those using it to build a virtual nuclear reactor to simulate ways for future reactors to last longer and burn at a higher energy efficiently rate and with less waste.

Revive Alt Energy
The President reached across the political aisle while talking about energy. The energy future requires all types of alternative energy, from solar and wind to clean coal and natural gas. He said…

“With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.” (20:41-20:52)

With the $4 billion President Obama says will be cut from annual oil subsidies, he will direct that money into electric car development. That includes:

$7,000 instant rebate when purchasing an electric car
30 percent increase in R&D for vehicle technology, including an energy innovation hub for batteries and storage
30 communities will get $10 million grants once they demonstrate a concrete plan to streamline regulations, develop infrastructure, make fleet conversions or offer electrical vehicle incentives, such as commuter lane access

He said…

“So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all — and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.” (21:42-22:15)

STEM the Education System
All of the innovation the President envisions won’t be possible without future generations of competent workers. And that all starts in schools, which are not keeping students competitive, globally. President Obama said…

“The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree.” (22:58-23:08)

Before the State of the Union, the 2009 report card on the nation’s schools was released. Secretary Arne Duncan was disappointed with the results, especially in math and science.

He says, “When only 1 or 2 percent of children score at the advanced levels on NAEP, the next generation will not be ready to be world-class inventors, doctors, and engineers.”

In one of the few standing ovations of the evening during his State of the Union address, President Obama said to celebrate science not celebrity. He said…

“We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.”(23:39-23:46)

Get to Work
As test scores show that the U.S. is slipping behind other countries and losing its leading educational edge, the President told people to go to work and become teachers or get retrained and work in biotechnology. He said…

“And over the next 10 years, with so many baby boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science and technology and engineering and math.” (27:21-27:33)

“One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me she’s earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to pursue their dreams, too. As Kathy said, “I hope it tells them to never give up.” (29:18-29:44)

We are a nation of immigrants. And those who come here are looking for a better life and for opportunity. Our schools still provide that service for foreign students. President Obama said…

“Others come here from abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.” (30:55-31:06)

“But tonight, let’s agree to make that effort. And let’s stop expelling talented, responsible young people who could be staffing our research labs or starting a new business, who could be further enriching this nation.” (31:42-31:55)

Infrastructurovation
Building new roads, transportation and technology infrastructure have been endeavors that the U.S. has always done first and best. But our aging systems are causing us to lose ground to other nations. The President said…

“Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.” (32:34-32:49)

South Korea offers its citizens the Internet everywhere and as a result 95.9% of Koreans enjoy that connectivity. In the U.S. the number of people with Internet access is growing but only at 63.5% of the population has an Internet connection.

China is investing 9 percent of its gross domestic product in roads and railways while Europe is investing 5 percent. The U.S. is only spending two percent of GDP on transportation infrastructure. But with the largest GDP in the world — at $15.2 trillion — our two percent is equal to $304 billion a year. China and Europe are still investing more at $576 billion and $805 billion respectively.

The Future Will be Open
With all the technology that has been created and built in the last 30 years now able to connect people more with the government, President Obama pledges to let the people see where the money is being spent. He said….

“Because you deserve to know exactly how and where your tax dollars are being spent, you’ll be able to go to a website and get that information for the very first time in history.” (49:57-50:07)

“The 21st century government that’s open and competent. A government that lives within its means. An economy that’s driven by new skills and new ideas. Our success in this new and changing world will require reform, responsibility, and innovation.” (50:50-51:17)

The American Dream
Every year a quintessential American story highlights the President’s address. This year a Pennsylvania drill operator held the dream. After hearing that the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground last August wouldn’t be freed until Christmas he knew his company had the technology to drill a hole through the hard, volcanic rock much faster. President Obama highlighted the tale of the American who helped save the Chilean miners last year. He said…

“And that dream is the story of a small business owner named Brandon Fisher. Brandon started a company in Berlin, Pennsylvania, that specializes in a new kind of drilling technology. And one day last summer, he saw the news that halfway across the world, 33 men were trapped in a Chilean mine, and no one knew how to save them.

But Brandon thought his company could help. And so he designed a rescue that would come to be known as Plan B. His employees worked around the clock to manufacture the necessary drilling equipment. And Brandon left for Chile.

Along with others, he began drilling a 2,000-foot hole into the ground, working three- or four-hour — three or four days at a time without any sleep. Thirty-seven days later, Plan B succeeded, and the miners were rescued. (Applause.) But because he didn’t want all of the attention, Brandon wasn’t there when the miners emerged. He’d already gone back home, back to work on his next project.
And later, one of his employees said of the rescue, “We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.”(64:33-66:07)

And, science helps us do big things.

Here are a few future leaders, who had the privilege of sitting in the First Lady’s box during the State of the Union.

Amy Chyao
Richardson, TX

Amy, a sixteen-year-old high school junior from Richardson, Texas, has developed a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment that uses light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer cells. With her work, Amy won the first place Gordon E. Moore Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, a program of Society for Science & the Public, in May 2010. Amy met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair.

Brandon Ford
Philadelphia, PA

Brandon, a junior at West Philadelphia High School, is a leader of the West Philly Hybrid X Team, which includes students from an afterschool program at the West Philadelphia High School Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. Brandon and the Hybrid X team recently entered two cars in the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE competition, a global challenge that sought to deliver production-ready, highly fuel efficient vehicles. They successfully went head-to-head with corporations, universities and other well-funded organizations, even advancing to an elimination round with their Ford Focus that got an official 65.1 MPGe.

Mikayla Nelson
Billings, MT

Mikayla Nelson is currently a freshman at Central Catholic High School in Billings, Montana. As a middle schooler at Will James Middle School, she led her Science Bowl team to a 1st place finish at the National Science Bowl for the design document of their solar car. They also won 5th place in the U.S. Dept of Energy’s Junior Solar Sprint. Mikayla met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair where she represented her Science Bowl team and exhibited their solar car.

Kathy Proctor
Winston-Salem, NC

Kathy Proctor grew up in Trinity, North Carolina where, after graduating, she went to work in the furniture industry like many others in the area. When she was laid off in 2009, Kathy began taking classes in biotechnology at Forsyth Technical Community College. Kathy will graduate in July 2011, with an Associate Degree in Science, and hopes to attain a job working as a bio-fuels analyst. Kathy met the President when he visited Forsyth Tech in early December 2010.

Diego Vasquez
Phoenix, AZ

Diego Vasquez, currently a freshman at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, was a member of the team from Cesar Chavez High School in Laveen, Arizona that won a grant through the Lemelson-MIT Program’s InvenTeams initiative for their design of a fully adjustable motorized chair for persons who could primarily use it for physical therapy. Diego met the President at the October 2010 White House Science Fair where he represented his team and demonstrated their chair.

It sounds like something right out of Jurassic Park but scientists in Japan have plans to bring the long-extinct mammoth back to life using cloning technology within the next 5 years.

Akira Iritani, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University in Japan, is looking to resurrect the woolly mammoth using a new cloning technique.

The plan would take genes from a mammoth and insert them into an embryo which would be placed inside an elephant. If the clone is successful a baby mammoth would be born.

No doubt this will spark an ethical debate about reviving extinct species and cloning.

Some scientists say the odds of getting the necessary mammoth tissue and creating a successful clone in five years are less than 50-50.

Mammoths have been extinct for about 8,000 years.

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.