Biological Breakthrough: Mutated Zebra Fish

Scientists are now able to produce zebra fish who deserve the bizarre names given to them: half-baked, avalanche, speed bump, zombie, ogre, lost-a-fin, piggy tail, snow white, bashful, sleepy, cyclops, mind bomb, uncle freddy, dogeared, van gogh, silentheart, and throbless. Not your typical names for fish often sold to people setting up their first aquariums. However, with a little gene mutation (continued...)

Major Science Breakthrough: Sheep Cloning

In late February, 1997, a white-nosed lamb swept into the public eye: 7-month-old Dolly, the first animals cloned from an adult cell. She excited both the research community and the general public because although animals had been cloned before, creating sheep from a cell of a 6-year-old ewe was a stunning technological feat that many had thought impossible. (continued...)

What's Wrong with the Frogs?

On August 8, 1995, a teacher and her students went on a field trip to a farm in south-central Minnesota. The children began chasing after frogs, and one boy after having caught a frog, remarked that it looked strange. He brought the frog to his teacher and they peered at a frog without his hind leg. (continued...)

An Evolutionary Breakthrough: The Discovery of a "Fingered" Fish

Two fossil-hunting paleontologists named Ted Daeschler and Neil Shubin from North central Pennsylvania discovered a fossil of a fish with fingers in its fins. They found this rock near the Susquehanna River by the side of a road in 1995. This finding could cause the rewriting of textbooks all around the world. (continued...)

Hey, Mars! Long Time No See!

The date was July 4, 1997. The time was shortly before ten in the morning (central time). The place was Mars, Earth's neighbor in the solar system. On that date, at that time, in that place, one of the most noteworthy scientific breakthroughs of the last two years occurred: the day that the spaceship Pathfinder landed successfully on the red planet, marking the first landing on the planet in 21 years. (continued...)

Science's Impact on Life

The Adult Scientific World and Its Effect on a Little Girl

Not much was known about the strand of bacteria call E. coli 0157:H7, when it entered my body in 1990. I was an unsuspecting eight year old who was looking forward to the first day of school in third grade. I never got there for that opening day. (continued...)

The Cryostat

A few cell types are thin enough to be viewed directly in a microscope like algae and protozoa, but most tissues such as the liver or the brain are too thick to allow light to be transmitted through them. (continued...)

Electron Microscope

The first electron microscope was made in 1932. This instrument was given its name because a beam of electrons are passed through the specimen rather than a beam of light. (continued...)

Polyacrylamide Gel Electrophoresis

Electrophoresis is a method of separating proteins and nucleic acids. This method works by applying a constant voltage to a small container of gel in which proteins or nucleic acids are placed. (continued...)

Laboratory Abstracts

Comparing Plants, Animals, & Protists

To even an amateur observer of cells, many of the differences between those of plants, animals, and protists are obvious. (continued...)

Down & Dirty DNA Extraction

In bacterial cells there is no nucleus, so DNA just floats around in the cytoplasm. This piece of information makes bacteria like e-coli a prime target for DNA extraction. (continued...)

Analyzing the Types of Photosynthetic Pigment

When you observe a leaf in the summer, you will notice that it appears green. What you see is the pigment chlorophyll, which ranges from the colors blue to olive-green. (continued...)

Spotlight on Women in Science

Rosalind Franklin

Even though Rosalind Franklin made a major breakthrough dealing with the DNA structure, she was not acknowledged like Watson, Crick, and Wilkins, who shared a Nobel Prize. (continued...)

Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall, whose full name is Jane Van Lawick-Goodall, was born in 1934 in London. She is an ethologist, which is a scientist who studies the origins, histories, and customs of peoples. (continued...)

Grace Murray Hopper

Grace Hopper was a talented woman who was largely responsible for the computer technology that is accessible to many people today. (continued...)