Judge medical writers on issues that matter most in a given story, not just on what's easiest to quantify.

Physicians weigh in on how reporters refer to certain medications.

Here are thematic debates, minus the candidates, that you can take in via your computer.

Tainted infant formulas point to a problem in the way society values moms.

Investments in health, one of the largest segments of the U.S. economy, have been stagnating — and could be poised to actually take a big hit.

October 16–25 Imagine Science Film Festival to be held in New York City. Visit www.imaginesciencefilms.com October 28–30 ChemEng08 to be held in Birmingham, England. Visit www.chemeng08.com November 1 The Dibner Hall of the History of Science opens at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. Visit www.huntington.org

Fishy Conversations — Spiny lobsters are like men, their voices become deeper as they grow older. This is one of the preliminary findings of Dr. James M. Moulton of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Me., who spent this summer at the Bermuda Biological Station eavesdropping on the conversations of undersea life. In countless other marine biological stations and research laboratories throughout the world, other researchers like Dr. Moulton are studying the various aspects of the oceans. The aim is twofold: They hope to unravel some of the mysteries of what many scientists feel is the “last frontie...

Only in the north It is not clear in the fine article on volcanoes (“Disaster goes global,” SN: 8/30/08, p. 16) how dust from the eruption of Huaynaputina, well south of the equator, in 1600 could affect only the Northern Hemisphere. David Bronson, Biddeford Pool, Maine For one thing, there’s less real estate in the Southern Hemisphere to have been affected. Also, the apparent lack of agricultural effects probably stems from population distribution at the time this eruption popped off. Australia was inhabited only by Aborigines until 1787 or so, and Cape Town, South Africa, wasn’t...