The NASA mission to search for water on Mars; forensic science's take on the fossilized remains of two mammoths whose tusks were entwined as if in battle; a profile of cancer researcher Judah Folkman (1933-2008), who, despite skepticism from the medical community, proposed the now-accepted idea of cutting off the blood supply to tumors.
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Leeches, bloodsuckers with a bad reputation; the Allen Telescope Array, a project that searches for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe; creating embryonic-like stem cells from adult skin cells; marine-bioluminescence specialist Edie Widder, who developed a camera system that uses a light wavelength that's invisible to sea creatures.
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How finches learn to sing and humans learn to talk; the Northern Lights; Yoky Matsuoka, director of the Neurorobotics Laboratory at the University of Washington; determining bridge safety with ultrasonic sound waves and nanotechnology.
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A mission to repair the Hubble space telescope; University of Florida paleontologist Jonathan Bloch's search for the pre-primate missing link; a profile of Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, a Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon and oncologist who illegally entered the U.S. in 1987 in search of farmwork; an Iraqi bacteria, Acinetobacter baumannii, that is resistant to many antibiotics.
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A look at whether a genetic profile can predict one's medical future; using computers to detect forged paintings; a method of capturing carbon dioxide from the air, which was inspired by a student's school experiment; Harvard scientist Pardis Sabeti, who studies the genetics of malaria by day and performs rock music by night.
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The season opener visits an abandoned mine where scientists are trying to prove the existence of dark matter. Also: an experiment that's restored memories to forgetful mice that may, one day, help Alzheimer's patients; a profile of Dartmouth computer-science professor Hany Farid, who has created a computer program to determine the authenticity of a photograph; a comic song in honor of aristocratic British scientist Francis Galton (1822-1911).
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