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If the holy grail of medieval alchemists was turning lead into gold, how much more magical would it be to draw gold from, well, poop? It turns out that a ton of sludge, the goo left behind when treating sewage, could contain several hundred dollars' worth of metals-potentially enough to generate millions of dollars worth of gold, silver, and other minerals each year for a city of a million people.

Millions of people in 70 countries across Asia, Africa, and South America have been exposed to high levels of mercury as small-scale mining has proliferated over the past decade. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that at least 10 million miners, including at least four million women and children, are working in small "artisanal" gold mines, which produce as much as 15 percent of the world's gold.

A selection of articles to further your understanding of the production and function of blood within the human body; the views about blood that predominated for centuries and the medical practices that such views helped to engender; the advancements in the medical use and collection of blood brought on by war, most notably World War II; modern-day techniques for the collection, storage, and use of blood. Some articles are augmented by video clips from RED GOLD: THE EPIC STORY OF BLOOD. (The free RealPlayer plug-in is required to view the clips.)

Dubilier is hardly alone in her plight. A heaping teaspoon of soil or a shot of ocean water may contain as many as one million bacterial species. Many of them are potential gold mines of chemicals and metabolites with medicinal, engineering, and energy applications. But when researchers have tried to culture these microbes in the lab, only a minority of cells form colonies. Clearly, nutrients, a carbon source, and time are usually not enough to coax bacteria isolated from the wild to grow in a laboratory setting. So what's the missing ingredient?

10 min video on stem cells, used in U Rochester Med Center, Life Sciences Learning Center Stem Cell lesson

Look no further! This page is a gold mine for teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The grade level science and math buttons will take you to the best of lessons done by area teachers in ScienceWise courses as their requirement for graduate credit. The "Other Resources" button leads to links for national websites, each with numerous, vetted lesson plans, classified by topic and grade level.

This case study introduces students to the true story of Caster Semenya, an outstanding female mid-distance runner from South Africa.  Caster won the 800 m race at the 2009 Track and Field World Championships when she was just 18. Since then, she has faced scrutiny about her sex and gender. Due to her high levels of endogenous testosterone, she was banned from running for almost a year by the track and field governing body, the IAAF. In this case study, students use information from news reports and Caster's appearance to determine the possible biological underpinnings likely responsible for her anatomy and physiology.  Students are also asked to consider if using circulating testosterone levels to determine if a female can race is a valid method of exclusion. This case asks students to think about how sex and gender are related, and pushes them to discuss societal implications of labeling both of these constructs as binary when in fact they are much better described as spectra.