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The article discusses the fears of pregnant women in the U.S. for the Zika virus, noting the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to receive blood tests weeks after traveling to an affected area.

The article focuses on Wiley College, a small African American college in Marshall, Texas. In the 1930s, the school won a series of national debating competitions against white-only schools, including the 1935 national championship. Since 2000, it has been on the brink of financial collapse. On December 25, 2007, "The Great Debaters," a motion picture on the 1935 championship directed by and featuring Denzel Washington will debut. The school hopes the film can revive its fortunes.

The article focuses on the uncertain future of abstinence-only sex education. Many of the programs have had their funding eliminated or reduced by state governments, while other states have rejected abstinence education altogether. Federal funding could also be cut. Surveys show a decline in sexual activity by teenagers, but it predates abstinence education. Texas, the state with the most abstinence programs, had the smallest decline in teenage sexual activity.

COROLLA, N.C. -- Come summer, the beaches of this barrier island will be choked with cars and sunbathers, but in the off-season the land is left to wild horses. Smallish, tending toward chestnut and black, they wander past deserted vacation rentals in harems of five or six. Thousands of them once roamed the length of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the likely descendants from mounts that belonged to Spanish explorers five centuries ago. Now their numbers have dwindled to a few hundred, the best known living on federal parkland at Shackleford Banks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Witness testimony has been the gold standard of the criminal justice system, revered in courtrooms and crime dramas as the evidence that clinches a case. Yet scientists have long cautioned that the brain is not a filing cabinet, storing memories in a way that they can be pulled out, consulted and returned intact. Memory is not so much a record of the past as a rough sketch that can be modified even by the simple act of telling the story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just as the ear has two purposes -- hearing and telling you which way is up -- so does the eye. It receives the input necessary for vision, but the retina also houses a network of sensors that detect the rise and fall of daylight. With light, the body sets its internal clock to a 24-hour cycle regulating an estimated 10 percent of our genes. The workhorse of this system is the light-sensitive hormone melatonin, which is produced by the body every evening and during the night. Melatonin promotes sleep and alerts a variety of biological processes to the approximate hour of the day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One callous question turned Brittany Caesar into a medical pioneer: ''Why do you eat so much? It's not normal.'' At that moment, she was in the Campbell Middle School cafeteria, sitting down to her usual lunch: two cheeseburgers, two orders of fries and a Coke. She knew she weighed too much. Her whole family weighed too much. But her world revolved around food, and she could not imagine any other existence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A highly drug-resistant germ has become a common cause of meningitis, pneumonia and other life-threatening conditions in young children. The culprit -- a strain of strep bacteria -- can conquer almost all antibiotics in pediatrics, and has dodged a vaccine otherwise credited with causing the number of serious infections in children to plummet. Since 2000, American toddlers have been immunized against Streptococcus pneumoniae, or pneumococcus, an organism that preys largely on children younger than 5 and the elderly. Pneumococcal meningitis can be fatal, and survivors are often left with deafness and other lifelong neurological problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to ''creation science,'' which became ''intelligent design,'' which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge. Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are ''creationism'' or ''intelligent design'' or even ''creator.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a cancer patient, lymph nodes are the closest thing to a crystal ball. Gaze into them after removing a tumor. The presence of malignant cells may be a sign that the cancer will recur, leading to more tests and intensive treatment. As biopsies of the lymph nodes grow more sophisticated and sensitive, oncologists and patients face the unsettling question of what to do with a little bit of cancer. It has become a familiar debate, especially for breast cancer, with no clear answer in sight. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Questions why teenagers smoke. Efforts of the United States Food and Drug Administration to shield youth from tobacco; Comments from Thomas Glynn, chief of cancer prevention and control research at the National Cancer Institute; Impact of tobacco marketing on teenagers' smoking habits.