by Caitlin Gee, High Technology High School, Lincroft, New Jersey
Intel released the names of the finalists for the 2012 Science Talent Search. Out of the 40 finalists chosen, 11 were from the tri-state area. Furthermore, out of the nine finalists who represent New York, three of them reside in New York City!

Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson have identified cancer cell mitochondria as the energy provider of tumor growth. This will allow room for new therapeutic targets in breast cancer.

By Mariel Emrich, Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School
Have you ever wondered how long you are going to live? Then this may be the test for you! Maria Blasco of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid invented a telomere test that measures the length of the telomeres in the patient’s body. The Patient’s Telomere Score is calculated based on the telomere length on white blood cells. The higher the telomere score, the younger the cells. Scientists believe that telomere length is one of the most accurate ways of distinguish how long a person will live.

by Caitlin Gee, High Technology High School, Lincroft, New Jersey
Every year, scientists from all over the world congregate at the American Astronomical Society’s semi-annual meetings to discuss and share their findings from the past several months. January's meeting was no exception, as scientists unveiled a plethora of fascinating discoveries that add to humanity’s constantly-expanding knowledge of the universe.

Community structure in ecology is defined by species richness and population abundance, characteristics that some scientists have argued are produced by unrelated, chance processes. But new research by a team of scientists in Germany and the United States has taken chance out of the biodiversity equation. After uncovering similarities in the community structure of tropical forests in three regions of the world, the scientists concluded that species richness and abundance must be governed by related, deterministic processes, including predation and disease.

Six-month-old infants who have been introduced to starchy table foods, that often contain salt, have a greater preference for salty foods than do infants not yet eating these foods, according to a recent study by researchers from the Monell Center and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Sea Snails -- specifically Aplysia californica -- are helping scientists enhance the memories of people with learning impairments. Because Applysia's brain has much in common with the human brain, the snails are useful in helping scientists understand how the brain learns as well as how memory storage works.

Solifuges (also called camel spiders, wind scorpions or sun-spiders) are ancient, nonvenomous arachnids in the Order Solifugae. They are related to true spiders and scorpions and the other members of the Class Arachnida (I like to think of them as cousins). They are easily identified by their huge forward facing jaws, called chelicerae. Unlike spiders and scorpions that use venom to kill their prey, solifuges use their powerful chelicerae to crush and macerate their prey. Then they use their rostrum (an organ that operates like a straw) to suck down and filter all of the juices of the crushed food.

By Mariel Emrich, Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School
Bipolar disorder is a condition in which people have mood swings. They have periods of happiness and periods of depression. Doctors are unsure what causes bipolar disorder. However, it is clear that bipolar disorder is carried down genetically, since the disorder runs in families. New research in 2011 suggests that rare copy number variants (CNVs) where sections of DNA are either duplicated or missing seem to play a major role in the risk for early onset bipolar disorder.

The continued increase of atmospheric carbon suggests that by the end of this century the world’s oceans, which absorb 25 percent of our carbon dioxide emissions, could contain twice as much of the greenhouse gas as they do now. Such a steep rise could have significant impacts on some species of marine fish, since the introduction of more carbon dioxide turns seawater acidic and dramatically alters the animals’ sensory response -- changes that a new report published in the journal Nature Climate Change indicates are mediated by a chemical receptor in the brain known as GABA-A.

From searching for invertebrates to measuring wind speed, everyone can gain new knowledge and skills and play their part in protecting the natural environment. This is the philosophy of Open Air Laboratories (OPAL), a project based in England that encourages the public to explore their surroundings, record their findings, and submit their results to the OPAL national database making their contribution available to scientists and others involved in environmental science and policy.