Mary Carmichael

The earth, says "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," is quite nondescript in the cosmic scheme of things. Its distinguishing feature: that it's "mostly harmless." If author Douglas Adams were alive he'd probably say the same thing about Gliese 876, a dwarf star in the constellation Aquarius that's only 2 percent as bright as the sun and until now hasn't attracted much attention.

The laws of nature sound like they were drafted in ivory towers: Boyle's law, Bernoulli's principle, the three laws of thermodynamics. But if Polish physicist Adam Lipowski is right, scientists may soon add a more common-sense axiom: what goes around comes around.

The human genome project may be near completion, but the "real" human-genome project is just getting underway. Scientists now know the sequences of most of our genes.

When Amit Patel says he operates in three different time zones, he's not just complaining about his constant jet lag. Patel, a heart surgeon, is based at the University of Pittsburgh.

For diseases ranging from asthma and arthritis to cancer, the cure may be all in the timing. Until recently, most Western docs didn't think it particularly mattered when patients took their drugs, as long as they took them.

For a type of germ most often described as "common," the rhinovirus is a thing of ingenious design, a bug with a thousand ever-mutating faces. If you're unlucky enough to have a rhinovirus in your body, you might have a few more choice descriptions, too: it's the cause of most colds.

If the USDA thought it had a winner with its flashy new food pyramid and Web site, it certainly had some early evidence. In its first 24 hours, MyPyramid.gov received 48 million hits--enough traffic to temporarily crash the site, as eager users checked out the formula, which can be customized according to age, gender and activity level.

The genetic flaw called Fragile X has a suite of tragic symptoms--mental disabilities, autism and seizures among them. Like most developmental defects, it's permanent, or that's what doctors have assumed.

It was late on the morning of April 1, 1946, and on the island of Hawaii, children from the school at Laupahoehoe Point were the first to see the Pacific Ocean disappear.

If it's true that intelligent people never get bored, 14-year-old Shannon McClintock ought to be thrilled every minute she's awake. In October her science skills won the top prize at the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge.

To say that aplysia californicus is one of nature's least glamorous beasts would be too kind. A hermaphroditic marine snail with mottled purple skin, it keeps to itself, responding to disturbances by emitting a murky fluid that stains the water around it.

If you're one of the thousands of people who bought Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" in 1988 and then let it gather dust as it sat on the coffee table impressing your visitors, better clear some space.

Osteoporosis is already common among the elderly. But a new surgeon general's report says that, in the near future, fully half of people older than 50 will be at risk for the disease.

Ask anyone with bifocals: doctors can't give patients older than 45 perfect vision. In middle age, the lens loses elasticity. But the muscles operating it, allowing younger people to change focus automatically, work long past then.

Compared with other methods of managing diabetes--strict diets, insulin injections, vigilant blood-sugar monitoring--Richard Surwit's technique seems too easy to be true.

Under the lights of his operating room at New York Presbyterian Hospital, heart surgeon Dr. Craig Smith looks like a futurist, using high-tech robotic techniques on elderly patients once deemed too fragile for major surgery.

America may still depend on foreign oil for energy, but if blue-sky scientists have their way, in the future it will rely on ecofriendly domestic fuels--like plankton, sunflowers, gold or bananas, which may not be a major U.S. crop but at least are grown in this hemisphere.

Yuval Peleg and Itzhak Magen are not revolutionaries. They work for the establishment--both respected archeologists have offices at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

FRANCIS CRICK, 88 Crick's life, like the strands of DNA whose structure he helped discover, was entwined with its opposite--where Francis Crick was private, James Watson was gregarious.

Stress, colds, sleep deprivation, trouble with family and friends, trouble with "more than friends," depression, Internet addiction, sinus infections, deaths in the family, alcohol--according to the National College Health Assessment, if you're an undergraduate or about to be one, these are the top 10 things you think will keep you from getting straight A's next year.

Anyone who's taken high-school health class has seen it: the filmstrip with graphic footage of drunken-driving wrecks. For years anyone who went to college viewed it there, too.

Americans have a cholesterol problem, and we know it. But some who hoped they were in the clear may have gotten a shock last week when the National Cholesterol Education Program drastically lowered its LDL, or "bad cholesterol" guidelines.

Nearly a third of American children are overweight. How do you keep yours from joining the group? A study published last week in the Journal of Pediatrics points to some surprising warning signs.

Sudden cardiac arrest kills 930 people every day, mostly in their own homes. Using a defibrillator and CPR in the first five minutes can quadruple one's chances of survival.

The year's first case of human West Nile virus cropped up last week in New Mexico, and although it was a mild one, officials are expecting the season to be anything but.

TURKEY Ankara: Now or Never As momentum builds behind Turkey's bid to join the EU, the stakes on both sides are rising. Ankara hopes to get a date for the start of accession talks at December's EU summit.

The Pharaoh hound is a noble breed. Depicted on the walls of Egyptian tombs, it's thought to have been man's best friend for 2,000 years, even when dogs were more like wolves than the docile creatures we know today.

Water birth, homebirth, HypnoBirthing--when Marion McCartney started as a nurse-midwife 30 years ago, none of those were popular, and birth was just birth.

The first thing Dr. Stuart Trager wants you to know about the Atkins Youth Initiative is that it is not, repeat, not an attempt to starve America's children of carbohydrates, much less give them an excuse to eat nothing but bunless bacon cheeseburgers.

Morning sickness isn't a serious health problem, but try telling that to the 80 percent of expectant mothers whose days are derailed by nausea and vomiting early in their pregnancies.