G. Scott Thomas - Business First Buffalo

Girls have a definite edge in Western New York’s high schools, according to a new report from the New York State Education Department.

The graduation rate for female students is higher than the corresponding rate for males in 97 of 117 public high schools in the eight-county region, based on data from 2009. more...

By JON MOOALLEM, New York Times

IT ALL STARTED with a brawny, tattooed building contractor with a passion for exotic animals. He was taking biology classes at City College of San Francisco, a two-year community college, and when students started meeting informally early last year to think up a project for a coming science competition, he told them that he thought it would be cool if they re-engineered cells from electric eels into a source of alternative energy. Eventually the students scaled down that idea into something more feasible, though you would be forgiven if it still sounded like science fiction to you: they would build an electrical battery powered by bacteria. This also entailed building the bacteria itself — redesigning a living organism, using the tools of a radical new realm of genetic engineering called synthetic biology. more...