The Houston Cinema Arts Festival holds a competition called CineSpace, in which filmmakers from across the country create original short films using footage from NASA. Last year, one of the top mentions was directed by a creative mind from space city itself.

Chemistry surrounds us whether we know it or not. In fact, human beings are actually made of chemistry. But what does that mean? And what chemists really do? Up next, we go inside the lab with two chemists to find some answers.

In the early 1980’s, the California condor population dwindled to fewer than two dozen worldwide. The greatest known killer of these highly endangered birds is lead poisoning caused by ingesting small amounts of lead from decaying animals killed by lead bullets. New efforts are now underway to, once again, try to save the condor. Our environmental reporting partner Earthfix as the story.

3D printing is pervasive across many industries from medical to automotive to aviation to tech and more. But are there security risks associated with 3D printing? Can 3D printers be hacked? Hari Sreenivasan discusses the cybersecurity issues of 3D printing with Nikhil Gupta, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at New York University.

Scientists are experimenting with graphene, a 2-D material created at the atomic level to see how we can enhance our electronics. We go inside the lab at the Material Research Institute at Penn State University to learn more.

For centuries researchers have searched for ways to assist, rebuild and augment the human body. High-tech prosthetics, tissue regeneration and pharmaceutical engineering are just a few ways that scientists are pushing boundaries in the field of bioengineering. Adam Piore, author of The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human, joins Hari Sreenivasan.

Many of America’s astronauts learn celestial navigation at Morehead Planetarium at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus. More than 50 years after training there, former astronaut Jim Lovell returns to Morehead.

Up next, we visit Cyberchase STEM Day at Centennial Middle School, a STEM magnet school in Dade City, Florida where sixth graders learn about everything from reefs and rockets to conduction and computer programming.

The presence of clouds and shadows mean plants live in a constantly changing world of light. Researchers have identified that plants can detect shadows but how do they do it and how do they maximize efficiency for capturing sunlight?

As a part of the PBS documentary film Military Medicine: Beyond the Battlefield, we are introduced to retired army sergeant first class Ramon Padilla. He's turned his injury into a cutting edge continuation of this service.

A wood collection doesn’t sound very exciting. In fact, student and faculty at Pennsylvania State University ignored a rare collection of wood for more than forty years. But now one professor is dedicating his time to organizing it and unlocking its scientific secrets.

The landlocked Dead Sea of the Middle East is Earth's lowest spot on land. The current Dead Sea shoreline lies about 1,300 feet below sea level but it's dropping at a rate of about 4 feet per year. Yael Kiro is Geochemist at Columbia University and is using layers of salt from the seabed to study the significance of this change.

Earth's polar regions are sensitive enough that a difference of one or two degrees in temperature can thaw a world of ice. Polar scientist, Marco Tedesco of Columbia University's Earth Institute has been studying these warmer winters that affect our poles and our planet. This segment is part of our ongoing series of reports Peril and Promise on the challenge of climate change.

Over the last few decades an invasive crab native to Europe has been making its way to the west coast. Recently that crab species was found for the first time in Washington’s Puget sound. Now university of Washington researchers are trying to find out if more of these destructive invaders are lurking in the northwest inland sea. Our environmental reporting partner Earthfix has the story.

Every year thousands of students in Hillsborough County, Florida enter the state's STEM competition, but only the very best make it to the finals. In this segment, we take a look at the regional competition and meet the students preparing to be the cutting edge scientists of tomorrow.

3D printing takes the science of regenerative medicine to a whole new level with the replacement of human organs. The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is printing organs using human cells in a biodegradable frame allowing for nerves and blood vessels to grow into the organ and function normally.

For more than 10,000 years humans have been farming on this planet. Over time farmers have developed tools such as the tractor and fertilizer to make the practice more efficient. Now a team at Pennsylvania State University applied research laboratory is using 3D imaging, machine learning algorithms and the power of a laser to take farming to a whole new level.

Dave Mosher’s a science reporter has written for Scientific American, Popular Mechanics. National Geographic News and discovery.com throughout his career he's watched humans and robots launch into space flown over the North Pole to catch a total solar eclipse and toward a cutting edge nuclear reactor. He joins me now to discuss his first space shuttle mission story.

Located in Washington State, Hanford is the nation's largest nuclear cleanup site with 56 million gallons of radioactive waste sitting in old leaky underground tanks. There's a plan to clean it all up. And our environmental reporting partner Earthfix has the story.

For many years scientists believed it was the development of limbs that led water dwelling creatures onto land. However, old fossil data may now reveal that it was in fact vision that prompted fish to make the leap onto land hundreds of millions of years ago. Malcolm MacIver, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University speaks with Hari Sreenivasan.