It is well known how we humans respond to immediate stress—through a phenomenon we share with all animals known as fight or flight. During these times of increased threat, our bodies' systems work in concert to raise our heart rate, pump adrenaline, and sharpen our focus. Now scientists working at Northwestern University have discovered that these responses may be coordinated by special stress-receptor neurons, rather than in each cell individually.

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With Big Pharma spending upward of $1 billion to bring a single drug to pharmacy shelves, it’s little wonder that unprofitable afflictions like malaria and African sleeping sickness go largely ignored. Curtis Chong witnessed this neglect firsthand in 2001 as a third-year medical student working in an emergency room in Mozambique. Day and night, malaria patients lined up for treatment, but Chong’s medication stockpile was often too low or too antiquated to treat drug-resistant strains of the disease, and people were dying.

Six years later, the 31-year-old pharmacologist is spearheading an innovative way to bring better drugs, and more of them, to the developing world.

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What do starfish, salamanders, and the Hulk have in common? They all have the power of regeneration. Starfish can regenerate their legs; salamanders can do that and a few better by regrowing their tail, and parts of their heart and eyes. The Hulk, well, the Hulk can regenerate it all. We ordinary humans are not so lucky. If we lose something, it's gone for good, unless, that is, we happen to have a brother working in the field of regenerative medicine.

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University of Florida scientists have developed a new gadget that basically annoys patients into taking their prescribed drugs, then tests their breath to ensure that they've actually swallowed the necessary pill. When it's time to take your medication, the machine beeps. Ignore it and it beeps again. In fact, it gets louder and louder until you actually respond—after a predetermined time, if you haven't swallowed your meds, it sends a message to the clinical trial coordinator. The device also performs a breath test that picks up the presence of a chemical tracer.

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Perhaps you’re the type of health nut who takes four or five different vitamin concoctions each morning to support weight loss, anti-aging, good digestion, clear skin and high energy. Or maybe you’re just curious about the medicinal effects of black tea, cranberry juice and licorice. Well, you’re in for a treat.

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When Rajiv Bhushan’s father complained of blurry, browned vision and pain from bright lights, doctors told him that surgically replacing his eyes’ lenses was the only way to correct the cataracts that had left him legally blind. Instead, after learning that cataracts result from an age-related accumulation of proteins and lipids in a person’s lens, Bhushan, an electrical engineer, set to work concocting a chemical solution to break up the molecules clouding his father’s eyes.

Six years later, the eyedrops, called C-KAD, are entering the final stages of clinical testing. If all goes well, they will hit pharmacy shelves in two years, becoming the first non-surgical treatment.

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So you haven’t gotten around to donating blood or getting on the bone marrow transplant list or taking a class on CPR. It’s time to step up, people. Fortunately for you, you can cross the last one off the list, sort of. The American Heart Association is letting everybody know that even if you aren’t trained in CPR, jumping in and administering chest compressions if you witness an adult collapse after having a heart attack is more than twice as likely to save his life than just calling 911 alone.

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Robotics and surgery continue to intertwine with new research coming out of the Imperial College London. Computer scientists there have been improving upon the already tremendously sophisticated Da Vinci surgical robot. Currently, to operate the machine, a surgeon sits in a console from which she peers into the patient through a fiber optic camera. She manipulates the finely-tuned arms of the device with a set of fingertip controls. What the researchers are adding to the system is an attachment which can track the surgeon’s eye movements and present a three-dimensional map of the area of the patient at which the surgeon is looking. It does this by combining live imagery with a collection of scans of the patient taken prior to the surgery.

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We take about six months to create our annual list of the most impressive young scientists in the U.S., six months of quizzing academic department heads, professional organizations and journal editors about the most creative and important research in the country and the individuals making it happen. And every year, those leaders-a serious and measured group-nominate hundreds of candidates with barely contained excitement. "There is no doubt in my mind that his work will revolutionize the field," says one. "He has done something that, frankly, I thought was impossible," says another.

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