Honesty in Elections
Dirty tricks turn up every election season, in large part because they are so rarely punished. But two senators are introducing a bill today that would make deceiving or intimidating voters a federal crime with substantial penalties.

Main Camera 'A Great Loss' For Hubble
The primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope has shut down and is likely to be only marginally restored, NASA said yesterday, a collapse one astronomer called 'a great loss.'

Can Humanity Survive? Want to Bet on It?
Dr. Martin Rees gives civilization no more than a 50 percent chance of surviving until 2100. He expects great advances as researchers around the world link their knowledge — but he fears that progress will be undone by what he calls the new global village idiots.

World Scientists Near Consensus on Warming
Scientists from across the world gathered Monday to hammer out the final details of an authoritative report on climate change that is expected to project centuries of rising temperatures and sea levels unless there are curbs in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Someone (Other Than You) May Own Your Genes
The Food and Drug Administration’s recent declaration that food from cloned animals is safe was a fresh reminder of how poorly the biotech industry and its regulators have managed the field’s portfolio of innovation over the years.

At Ease, Mr. President
We hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”
But the president is not the commander in chief of anyone except the Armed Forces.

Unhappy Meals
Seven things humans should do to cut through the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we should eat in order to be maximally healthy.

Park, He Said
A road test of the self-parking device on the new Lexus LS 460 L.

Intel Says Chips Will Run Faster, Using Less Power
Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors.

A Contrarian View: Save Less, Retire With Enough
Could it be possible that you are saving too much for your retirement?

Colleges Regroup After Voters Ban Race Preferences
With Michigan’s new ban on affirmative action going into effect, and similar ballot initiatives looming in other states, many public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics.

In Clue to Addiction, a Brain Injury Halts Smoking: "Scientists studying stroke patients are reporting today that an injury to a specific part of the brain, near the ear, can instantly and permanently break a smoking habit. People with the injury who stopped smoking found that their bodies, as one man put it, “forgot the urge to smoke.”

Magical Thinking: Why Do People Cling to Odd Rituals?
On athletic fields, at the craps table or out sailing in the open ocean, magical thinking is a way of life. Elaborate, entirely nonsensical rituals are performed with solemn deliberation, complete with theories of magical causation.

Why Are There So Many Single Americans?
The news that 51 percent of all women live without a spouse might be enough to make you invest in cat futures. But consider, too, the flip side: about half of all men find themselves in the same situation.

Maine City Bans Smoking in Cars With Children
Tonya will have to be more careful where she lights up her Marlboros. Bangor is banning smoking in cars if children are present, and Ms. Henderson is accustomed to having a cigarette when her boyfriend’s 7-year-old daughter is in the back seat.

Don’t Call. Don’t Write. Let Me Be.
The fears of the direct marketing industry came true. Once a do-not-call list was created, people did register, in droves. Here's how to get rid of the rest of the spam and junk mail in your life.

China Criticized for Anti-Satellite Missile Test
The Chinese military used a ground-based missile to hit and destroy one of its aging satellites orbiting more than 500 miles in space last week -- a high-stakes test demonstrating China's ability to target regions of space that are home to U.S. spy satellites and space-based missile defense systems.

Brain Areas Active in Daydreaming
Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind, and certain brain regions are devoted to it. When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task, but other brain regions get busy during down time.

Talk of Universal Health Care Grows
Health care for all -- an elusive goal that has tantalized presidents and governors for decades -- is roaring back this year with ambitious proposals in a handful of prominent states. The Associated Press looks at proposals in front of state legislatures to break down the contentious issue.

Putting the Brakes on Light Speed
Scientists said yesterday that they had achieved a long-sought goal of slowing waves of light to a relatively leisurely pace and using those harnessed pulses to store an image. Physicists said the new approach to taming light could hasten the arrival of a futuristic era in which computers and other devices will process information on optical beams instead of with electricity, which for all its spark is still cumbersome compared with light.

First U.S. Uterus Transplant Planned
First came kidney, liver and heart transplants. Then a few doctors started transplanting hands. French surgeons even did a face. Now, doctors are planning the first womb transplant in the United States.

Children, Parents Drive Each Other to Early Graves
What exasperated or overworked parent hasn't declared to a child at least once: 'You'll be the death of me!' Now we know -- with unprecedented precision -- just how true that can be.

Farewell, Mr. Noodle
It was easy to assume that instant noodle soup was a team invention, one of those depersonalized corporate miracles, like the Honda Civic, the Sony Walkman and Hello Kitty, that sprang from that ingenious consumer-product collective known as postwar Japan. But no. Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958.

Congress to Take Up Net’s Future
Senior lawmakers, emboldened by the recent restrictions on AT&T and the change in control of Congress, have begun drafting legislation that would prevent high-speed Internet companies from charging content providers for priority access.

Agency Affirms Human Influence on Climate
A lot of government scientists have said it. But until yesterday, it appeared that no news release on annual climate trends out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the Bush White House had said unequivocally that a buildup of greenhouse gases was helping warm the climate.

New iPod/Phone Does It All
Apple announced a mobile phone Tuesday that fulfills several types of rumors: it's a widescreen, touchscreen iPod and a smartphone that offers a new way to manage voicemail.

What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses
Expert panels constantly expand what constitutes disease: thresholds for diagnosing diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and obesity have all fallen in the last few years. The criterion for normal cholesterol has dropped multiple times. With these changes, disease can now be diagnosed in more than half the population. Most of us assume that all this additional diagnosis can only be beneficial. And some of it is. But at the extreme, the logic of early detection is absurd. If more than half of us are sick, what does it mean to be normal?

A Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School
Scientists continue to venture into one of the prevailing mysteries of aging, the persistent differences seen in the life spans of large groups. In every country, there is an average life span for the nation as a whole and there are average life spans for different subsets, based on race, geography, education and even churchgoing. But the questions for researchers are why? And what really matters? The answers have been a surprise. The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education.

This Is Your Brain on Drugs, Dad
The fastest-growing population of drug abusers is white, middle-aged Americans. This is a powerful mainstream constituency, and unlike with teenagers or urban minorities, it is hard for the government or the news media to present these drug users as a grave threat to the nation.

Protecting Internet Democracy
Cable and telephone companies are talking about creating a two-tiered Internet with a fast lane and a slow lane. Companies that pay hefty fees would have their Web pages delivered to Internet users in the current speedy fashion. Companies and individuals that do not would be relegated to the slow lane. The fight in Congress will be early this year.

Microsoft Office Accounting Express... for Free
PC Magazine says: "This isn't the first time Microsoft has given a good product away. But in my recollection, this is the first time Microsoft has donated one that's worth so much to small businesses."

The Deep Blue Highway
The trucks that carry nearly a third of our cargo clog the highways. That is one reason why Americans now lose at least 3.7 billion hours and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel each year sitting in traffic. Ships could take on a larger share of this freight — and even some of the passengers now traveling by highway and rail — and carry it at lower cost.

A Past That Makes Us Squirm
Prior to 1492 the Americas were a complex cultural landscape with civilization ebbing and flowing, the spaces in between traversed by ancient lineages of hunters and gatherers. To the religious core of pre-Columbian Mayans, a beating heart ripped from someone’s chest was a thing of supreme sacredness and not prosaic violence.

Power-Sipping Bulbs Get Backing From Wal-Mart
The long-lasting, swirl-shaped light bulbs known as compact fluorescent lamps are to the nation’s energy problem what vegetables are to its obesity epidemic: a near perfect answer, if only Americans could be persuaded to swallow them. Wal-Mart is going to try.

Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t
Having just lived through another New Year’s Eve, many of you have just resolved to be better, wiser, stronger and richer in the coming months and years. After all, we’re free humans, not slaves, robots or animals doomed to repeat the same boring mistakes over and over again. Or are we?