By MARK ROTH, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Ex-Marine makes progress after hand transplant
The irony, Joshua Maloney said yesterday, is that he served two tours of duty in Iraq as a Marine combat engineer "and I never even caught a cold."
Then, while setting up a training exercise at the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Jan. 31, 2007, the Bethel Park native was holding a quarter-stick of TNT in his right hand when it accidentally exploded.
New video helps autistic children read emotions
Think Thomas the Tank Engine with human faces.
That's the concept behind "The Transporters," a new animated video series designed to teach autistic children how to recognize and interpret emotions.
Looking to tadpoles for answers to health risk of pesticides
Next to Pymatuning Reservoir in northwestern Pennsylvania are 700 water-filled tanks that may provide the answer to just how risky pesticides are to the environment and human health.
Engineers design GPS technology for football
When Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger fired a low pass on a recent Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens, his wide receiver, Hines Ward, scooped the ball up just before it hit the turf.
Researcher probes DNA blueprint of life for aging clues
Here's the dilemma.At a fundamental level, we age because our cells stop dividing and multiplying.So why shouldn't medical science try to extend our life spans and improve our health in old age by making sure our cells keep proliferating?
Algorithm lifts researcher into science stratosphere
Like a locksmith with a master key, Dr. Carlos Guestrin has created a computer algorithm that can do everything from figuring out the best way to detect water contamination to revealing which political blogs do the best job of staying on top of the news.
Light from exploding star arrives 7.5 billion years later
About 7 1/2 billion years ago, long before our solar system was born, a massive star exploded and collapsed in on itself.
PNC finds it easy to go green
PITTSBURGH -- Ten years ago, Gary Saulson's life was transformed by a telephone conversation and a leap of faith.Saulson, PNC's director of corporate real estate, had already started to watch the banking company's new downtown operations hub, Firstside Center, rise from the ground when he got a call from Rebecca Flora of the Green Building Alliance.
Professor looks for power in polymers
PITTSBURGH -- There are 3.5 million miles of rivers in the United States.In Lisa Mauck Weiland's dreams, they could be the next great clean energy source for the world, but not the old-fashioned way, with dams and hydroelectric power plants.

