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'I want to come back alive.' That's what Felix Baumgartner is thinking. This skydiver has good reason to worry. He is in a giant balloon. The balloon is floating 39 [...]

Look at this funny fish red lips frown. Check out its fins. It's standing on them like they are legs. This fish can actually walk on its fins. Yes, it's [...]

A blast of heat greets you as you enter the hot shop. You feel as though you are standing on the edge of a volcano. Inside a furnace, molten goo [...]

The article explores many COVID-19 vaccines proved effective over the last year, particularly at preventing severe disease and death. One from Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, and the other two from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—are available in the United States. Pfizer's is even available for children as young as 5.

The Glass Universe Dava Sobel VIKING, $30 In the early 1880s, Harvard Observatory director Edward Pickering put out a call for volunteers to help observe flickering stars. He welcomed women, [...]

The cover story is presented which discusses science news and discoveries in 2017. Science-related topics, including neutron star collisions, the controversy over the use of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing on human babies, the breaking off of the ice shelf Larsen C in the Antarctic Peninsula, the exoplanets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, global quantum communication and the use of chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T cell) immunotherapy to treat lymphoblastic leukemia, are discussed.

The article narrates how skydiver Felix Bumgartner tested how far and how fast a person can fall and still survive. It reveals that he floated 39 kilometers above the Earth, in a region called stratosphere where there is less air pressure, riding a giant balloon for two hours. It also mentions that his team of scientists had questions only his jump could answer, such as how a human body would react to such a big fall from such a high place, and how the technology to protect him worked.

The article discusses symmetry in nature. There is symmetry when both sides of an animal or plants are the same, and that body parts have the same size and shape. However, in nature, both sides are not always perfect matches. The batfish, luna moth and daisy are some animals or plants that exhibit symmetry. Snow also exhibits symmetry.

The article offers information on how body organs including teeth, tip of tongue and eye look different and larger when seen through a microscope as opposed to naked eyes. It highllights that microscopes magnify objects and make them look ten times or 1,000 times bigger than it really is. It states that through microscope eyeball looks stringy and wrinkly.

The article focuses on making different materials with glass. It also discusses the manufacturing of different items through hot glass including sculptures, globes and swirls. Glass is used for several purposes including fibres carrying television and Internet signals, lenses in telescopes and microscope lens.

The author reports on the deaths of wrestler Chris Benoit and his family on June 24, 2007. Theories of why Benoit killed himself, his wife Nancy and his son Daniel are given in the article. Benoit's relationship with his wife is being focused on in the investigation. One indication that something may have been wrong with Benoit was when he missed a wrestling match. INSETS: DOWN FOR THE COUNT;A WRESTLER'S LIFE.

The article discusses 2008 U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards, his wife Elizabeth Edwards, and her fight with the return of cancer. An incurable version of cancer has appeared in one of her ribs. The couple grappled with treatment decisions and informing the public. Mrs. Edwards vowed that her husband's campaign for the presidency should continue. Information on return breast cancer is given alongside news on White House spokesman Tony Snow's colon cancer. INSETS: WHEN BREAST CANCER RETURNS;Spokesman Tony Snow's Grim News.

This article discusses the rehabilitation of non-domesticated animals. The Wildlife Rescue Center in the Hamptons, New York, is profiled as it administers to the needs of wild animals in trouble. The goal of the program is to re-release these animals to the wild after successful treatment. Providing homes for the pets of dying patients is also discussed.

The article discusses the kidnapping and rescue of Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby. The two boys were kidnapped by Mike Devlin, the manager of a pizza restaurant in Kirkwood, Missouri. Hornbeck was taken by Devlin in 2002, and Ownby was kidnapped in December 2006. Both boys were discovered safe in Devlin's apartment. The article presents details about the case and the rescue. INSETS: STATS: KIDNAPPED BY A STRANGER;JESSYCA'S STORY: WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A CAPTIVE.

The article is about conjoined twins in the United States. Focusing on several families, including Ryan Shaw and Angie Benzschawel and Kevin and Melissa Buckles, the article gives information on the health risks of conjoined twins. Statistics are given on the survival rate for conjoined twins in the United States.

The article discusses kidnapping victim Natascha Kampusch's ordeal being held prisoner by telecom worker Wolfgang Priklopil and her escape ten years later. She says that she was forced to do chores around Priklopil's house or else was withheld food but would not admit being sexually abused by her captor. She was finally able to escape from captivity when Priklopil wandered off to take a phone call. She has since reunited with her family and has begun planning what she wants to do in the future. INSET: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL TOLL.

This article profiles Taylor Hicks, the winner of the reality television program "American Idol: Season 5." Hicks, a soul singer from Birmingham, Alabama, won over the television audience and judges on "American Idol," with his energetic stage presence and unique singing voice. Before trying out for "American Idol" Hicks performed at many bars and nightclubs in the Southern U.S. and self-released a cd of his own compositions.

This article discusses children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in the Ukraine. The radioactive fallout from this accident is believed to be the source of birth defects in a number of children in Belarus, many of whom are confined to a state-run hospital with little to no care. A group of American volunteers visited these hospitals to teach some of the staff therapeutic techniques and to spend time interacting with the children.

The article reports on the men killed in the mine explosion in Sago, West Virginia. The group of miners became like a family underground. Many of the men had worked in the mines for years, along with their relatives. Mining jobs are dangerous but are the best paid labor work in economically depressed Upshur County. Profiles are presented of each of the men killed or injured. INSETS: Her One True Love;DEATH BY CARBON MONOXIDE.

This article reports on the story of Terri Schiavo, the woman who suffered severe brain damage following a heart attack in 1990, and is in a vegetative state. There has been an ongoing legal battle between Schiavo's husband and her husband regarding whether or not Terri would have wanted to be kept alive. For a couple of years now, powerful conservatives and right-to-life groups have helped Terri's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, lobby for support among lawmakers, including the President's brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush, who ordered Schiavo's feeding tube to be restored when it was briefly removed by court order in 2003. When a Florida judge set a March 18 deadline for Schiavo's feeding tube to be removed again, pro-life lobbyists and Republicans who had been following the case pushed for a congressional intervention and won. INSET: HOW DID CONGRESS GET INVOLVED?.

This article focuses on Tiffany House, who suffers from Pompe disease, and how she has been able to live with the help of her adopted parents. Randall and Marylyn House adopted their infant daughter Tiffany in 1983, they imagined her life would be without limits. But as their little girl grew, trouble emerged. Tiffany was slow to walk and climb stairs and struggled to fight off even a minor cold. By grade school, she was healthy enough to play tennis and join a swim team but remained clumsier and weaker than her peers. Finally, after seeing several doctors, came a grim diagnosis--acid maltase deficiency, or Pompe disease, an incurable genetic disorder that affects one out of every 40,000 babies born in the U.S. Specialists told the Houses that Tiffany's muscles would inexorably deteriorate, and within a few years she would no longer be able to walk or breathe on her own. Powered by parental love, a family fortune and sheer determination, the couple have spent $4.6 million of their own money on conferences and research on Pompe disease--helping fund a groundbreaking enzyme replacement therapy headed for FDA review later this year. Pompe sufferers lack an enzyme that breaks down sugars in the muscles and turns them into glucose, the body's energy source. Instead, sugars clog the muscles, causing them to deteriorate. Encouraged by word of an experimental therapy to inject the missing enzyme into Pompe patients, the Houses poured money into two research centers about to launch clinical trials. In 1999 Marylyn moved to Europe with Tiffany in hopes of having her included in the Dutch study but refused to use money as leverage. Three months later, after passing tests that proved her eligible, Tiffany was accepted for treatment. In 2000, after surgery to straighten her spine, Tiffany's breathing and muscle control dramatically improved.

This article reports on the sentence decided upon by the jury in murder trial of Laci and Conner Peterson. Hunkered down over the past six months in the news-free zones of their homes, or the sequestered sanctity of their hotel rooms, and, ultimately, the privacy of their deliberation room, the Scott Peterson jurors managed to do something remarkable: calmly weigh the evidence in an extraordinary case with a full-blown media storm howling just outside their windows. Assuming his sentence is formally accepted by Judge Delucchi on Feb. 25, he will be sent to the state's death row at San Quentin, where--if the court history of other California death row inmates is a guide--he is more likely to die of other causes than by lethal injection as he waits for his appeals to wend their way through the system. INSETS: THE VIEW FROM DEATH ROW;THE JURY NEVER RESTS: THE TRIALS AFTER THE TRIAL.

This article highlights a family of cancer fighters. In the kitchen of their parents' house in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., the five Kimball sisters are deep in girl talk. Today's topic: Breasts. Few people understand that cruel reality of cancer more intimately than the Kimballs. They have spent the past decade on a terrifying medical odyssey. From their father, Don, 64, a car dealer, all five women have inherited a mutated gene called BRCA1, otherwise known as the breast cancer gene. So far, three have contracted the disease; the others watch and wait, knowing that experts say women with this genetic legacy have up to an 85 percent chance of developing breast cancer and often at an unusually young age. The odds that five daughters in the same family would inherit it are as small as 1 in 1,000. But in the case of the Kimballs, that's exactly what happened.Kristy, Wendi and Cindy have all had cancer discovered in one breast and made the choice to have both of their breasts removed. Since the BRCA gene mutation is also a strong indicator of future ovarian cancer, all three women have also had their ovaries removed, which cuts that risk by 75 percent. Though cancer free so far, another sister, Tammy, plans to have a double mastectomy next year, which is 90 percent effective in preventing cancer, just to be safe. They've been inspired to activism and have just set up the Kimball Family Foundation, an organization to educate women about genetic testing and raise money for women who cannot otherwise afford the up to $3,000 cost.

This article focuses on Elizabeth Edward's breast cancer diagnosis. Earlier that week, on the morning after her husband and John Kerry lost their grueling election battle, Elizabeth Edwards, a 55-year-old former attorney, announced to the nation that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Although specialists at Georgetown University Medical Center have yet to determine if her cancer has moved into her lymph nodes, she and her family are bracing for an aggressive 16-week course of chemotherapy, then surgery followed by radiation. According to breast radiation oncologist Dr. Marisa Weiss, founder of a respected information Web site for women with breast cancer, the course of treatment recommended by Edwards's doctors may indicate that the cancer has spread into the lymph nodes.

This article focuses on the actresses starring in the television program "Desperate Housewives," and their characters on the show. So it went when an under-the-weather Eva Longoria, who plays lingerie-flaunting Gabrielle on ABC's new smash Desperate Housewives, made a recent grocery-store run for chicken soup. Set amid the white-picket perfection of Wisteria Lane, U.S.A., the show invites viewers to snoop into the lives of four neighborhood pals: Lynette (Huffman), a business exec turned stay-at-home mom. she quips--while Huffman knitted a banana hat for her daughter's Halloween costume and Longoria gobbled a plate of ribs between scenes. The actress took a six-year break to raise daughter Emerson (with ex-husband Jon Tenney) after wrapping Lois & Clark in 1997. The London-born actress broke out in 1986 as a vixen on Knots Landing but ended up drawing just as much notice for her love life: past romances include Leif Garrett, Scott Baio, Michael Bolton and Harry Hamlin, to whom she was wed for one year.

The article discusses the life Christopher Reeve, actor and activist who became a quadriplegic since a horseback riding accident in 1995. Reeve died recently of cardiac failure, brought on by a raging infection that had spread from a bed sore. After the tragic accident berated lawmakers, sought out scientists, raised money for stem-cell and other research and argued for insurance reform. He may even have established medical precedents. He regained physical sensations (including touch and smell) and even limited movements that defy medical wisdom. He spoke at the 1996 Oscars. He wrote two bestselling memoirs, directed TV movies (1997's In the Gloaming)and even acted (in a TV remake of Rear Window, for which he won a Screen Actors Guild award, and Smallville, The WB's teenage Superman series). The odds against him were beyond grim: Of 11,000 people with spinal cord injuries, only 250 patients with Reeve's sort of catastrophic broken vertebrae survive, and those that do live on average seven years. His friend Ken Regan recalls that in the exercise room at Reeve's home, where he logged so many hours of physical therapy, he hung a sign--a promise to himself and a challenge to the world: "For everyone who thought I couldn't do it. For everyone who thought I shouldn't do it. For everyone who said, 'It's impossible.' See you at the finish line!" INSETS: DANA' S ROLE;CELEBRATING CHRIS;HIS PERSONAL CRUSADE;THE LIVES HE TOUCHED

The article mentions how five members of the Falsey family have donated kidneys to save lives. The Falsey family's surgical crusade began back in 1990, when Rich Schurman's son Aaron, then 17, went on dialysis after years of chronic illness. Watching that deterioration got to his uncle Tom Falsey, who without being asked offered in 2001 to donate his own kidney. Falsey was not a candidate for his nephew but undeterred, he offered to donate a kidney himself and, with help from his employer, gave a few thousand dollars to create a fund to defray the cost of donor testing. Given that nearly 60,000 Americans are awaiting kidneys--and that,according to UNOS, about 6 percent of those people will die waiting--"I don't understand why more people don't step forward," says Tom Falsey. "It's a rare opportunity where you can save someone's life at virtually no risk to yourself." Though kidney donation surgery is indeed relatively safe (with a mortality rate of 3 in 10,000 and just 1 percent of donors developing complications such as infection), anonymous donation--in which someone gives a kidney to a stranger--is still at the frontier of medicine. Between 1988, when figures were first collected, and the end of July, some 64,224 living donors gave kidneys; only 228 did so anonymously. INSET: WHO CAN DONATE A KIDNEY?.

The article discusses how ovarian tissue transplant can be used as a means of preserving fertility. Once the patient has recovered, the tissue is reimplanted, where it may once again begin producing eggs. Doctors remove most of the cervix and surrounding tissue, leaving a small opening to allow menstruation and conception. With the uterus left intact, women may carry babies to term. Ouarda Touirat was pregnant--and she had potentially lethal stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma. Forced to terminate the pregnancy and facing the likelihood that cancer treatment would leave her sterile, Touirat, then 25, and her husband, Malik Bouanati, 34, were inconsolable. Her doctor told her of experiments with removing healthy ovarian tissue from cancer patients and freezing it for use after chemo and radiation. She underwent chemotherapy to rid of the cancer and then early last year her doctor created a pocket between the end of the fallopian tube and Touirat's atrophied right ovary and then implanted her cryopreserved ovarian tissue. Four months later she began producing eggs and with no further help from her doctors became pregnant. Another woman, cancer survivor Patricia Kirkland underwent the procedure successfully. The procedure's French pioneer, Dr. Daniel Dargent, operated on Kirkland in September 2000 in France, where she was visiting the family of her boyfriend, Jean-Baptiste Humbert.

As the public mourning ends, Nancy Reagan returns to the house she shared with her beloved Ronnie--and faces life alone. She had stayed strong throughout the long, extraordinary ordeal--the years of watching Alzheimer's steal away the man she loved, and the weeklong public mourning that took her across the country and back again. Yet as the sun dipped behind the California hills at Ronald Reagan's burial service June 11, his wife of 52 years finally succumbed to grief. Now, widowed and due to celebrate her 83rd birthday on July 6, Nancy Reagan must find a way to go it alone. The solitude greeted her immediately: Exhausted by the grueling schedule of the funeral, she did not attend the postburial reception at the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library that evening and returned to her three-bedroom house in Bel Air. On July 23 she is scheduled to greet the recently launched aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan when it enters its home port of San Diego for the first time. INSET: WHO WAS THE SOLDIER AT NANCY'S SIDE ?.

This is an article that remembers former United States President Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004. After watching as the spark slowly faded from his eyes and listening as his voice finally fell silent, the family of Ronald Reagan gathered at his house in Bel Air in the last days of May.The former President, said his doctors, now had pneumonia in addition to his Alzheimer's. Delayed by traffic, Michael arrived at the house and found the family--Nancy, Reagan's daughter Patti Davis, 51, who lives nearby, and son Ron, 46, who had flown in from vacation in Hawaii--in Nancy's bedroom sitting on the couch. By the time Ronald Wilson Reagan, the longest-lived American President, made his final exit at age 93, he had given much indeed--not just to his family but to the nation that mourned him. Reagan's longevity, says his former White House physician John Hutton Jr., may be due to his "rugged constitution" and "enormously strong" heart. INSETS: His Friends Remember;The Latest on Alzheimer's.

This article focuses on religion in Hollywood and its presence in the lives of actors and celebrities. Despite high ratings for Joan of Arcadia on TV, numerous shout-outs to God on awards shows and stars such as Madonna and Mel Gibson speaking up about their religious beliefs, many Americans still feel alienated by the Hollywood studios' menu of coarse language, rampant sex, gay characters and certain Super Bowl halftime shows. Still, it's not as if Hollywood execs haven't noticed the power of religious-themed projects, thanks to the monumental success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which has earned an astounding $300 million at the box office so far, defying all expectations. Fortunately, Heaton, who says grace before meals and takes her four sons to church weekly, found a home on Raymond--one of the few shows to depict church-going as a matter of course. Governor Schwarzenegger and wife Shriver frequently bring their four kids to the folk-music mass at St. Monica Catholic church in Santa Monica. When asked to do an interview about Hollywood and religion, actor Kirk Douglas, who is Jewish, wrote a heartfelt letter recalling the anti-Semitism he endured as a child and his response to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. INSETS: STARS IN THE PEWS: THE WEST ANGELES CHURCH;KIRK SPEAKS OUT;WHAT IS SCIENTOLOGY?;HOLY-WOOD: AN ALTERNATIVE

Reviews the motion picture "The Passion of the Christ," directed by Mel Gibson. INSETS: Is It Too Violent?;Playing Mary;The Sins Of The Father.

At 92, the former President Ronald Reagan is in the last stages of Alzheimer's, the devastating disease from which he has suffered for nearly a decade. The once-robust leader of the free world can no longer speak, feed himself or even recognize his wife. Confined to a hospital bed, or occasionally placed in a wheelchair, he spends his days in a small room, where--on orders from a wife ferociously intent on guarding his dignity--even his closest friends have been forbidden to visit. While the former President's condition may come as a shock to admirers, for his wife, Nancy, it has become the focus of her life. According to friends, in recent years she has only rarely left her husband's side, especially since Ronald underwent hip surgery in 2001. With the help of doctors, nurses and a full-time housekeeping staff, Nancy, 82, spends nearly every day overseeing her husband's care--part of an increasingly lonely vigil that she calls "the long goodbye." Nancy had cataract surgery earlier this year, and the former First Lady's health is said to be more fragile, the emotional toll on her life increasingly visible. Yet friends of the couple take comfort in the fact that Ronald's illness has to a certain degree reunited their once-fractured family. Daughter Patti Davis, who wrote a bitter and thinly disguised fictional account of her family before reconciling with her mother two years ago, is now a regular visitor to the house. INSET: The Other Ronnie.