Guinea

Manthia Diawara brought his myriad perspectives to the Maryland Institute, College of Art this week, perspectives forged in a life of contrasts.This is specialist in film and literature is at home in the bistros of Paris and lofts of SoHo. But his first schooling came at age 13 in a West Africa that was taking the first unsteady steps of independence.The second in a series of visiting scholars and authors honoring 20 years of Fred Lazarus' presidency of the institute, Diawara, 46, a professor of comparative literature at New York University, gave a lecture last night after spending two days with students, talking, criticizing, looking, absorbing.

The last time John Glenn flew in space, he was 40 years old. His Mercury space capsule had 56 toggle switches, 143 cockpit displays and no on-board computers.When the shuttle Discovery leaps off the launch pad this week, with a 77-year-old Glenn strapped in below decks, pilot Steven W. Lindsey will command five computers, and a dashboard crammed with 856 toggles and 2,312 displays.This is not your grandfather's spaceship. And fortunately for all on board, the World War II fighter pilot -- born six years before Charles Lindbergh made the first solo flight across the Atlantic -- will not be flying it.Nor will he deploy the Spartan solar observatory, test equipment to be used in the next servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, or help with observations of Jupiter by the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker.

Gary Calton believes his tiny Baltimore biotechnology venture, AuRx Inc., has the long-sought-after vaccine for herpes, the viral disease that is infecting Americans at an accelerating pace. If he's wrong, his company could become another of the many that have tried and failed in the quest.But Calton is so bullish on his privately held company's vaccine that he has sunk more than $600,000 of his own money into the project."No one has seen a vaccine that does what ours can do," said Calton.

Ever wake up feeling like the Tin Man after a damp night sleeping outdoors?Your knuckles ache, your elbows, your knees, every other place where bone is joined to bone squeaks with pain?If so, you might want to think about honeybee venom. Some people believe it relieves the pain of arthritis. The evidence for this is anecdotal. That means it's never been proved that the chemicals and enzymes and whatnot that make up honeybee venom can actually ease the agony of arthritis, or anything else.

Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer whose life was as exotic as his name, dove into 18th-century Africa and found that the forest primeval could be boring."

WASHINGTON -- It is a terrifying proposition: Inject yourself with a weakened AIDS virus in the hope it will become not the deadly disease, but create the vaccine for it.At least 50 uninfected doctors and activists this week offered themselves up as human guinea pigs, largely to protest the glacial pace of vaccine research.The risks are enormous. The science is unclear. And, should the government approve such a trial, it is almost certain that some of the volunteers will become ill with the human immunodeficiency virus, suffer and die.But, with 8,000 people a day becoming infected with HIV -- most in countries with no access to life-saving drugs -- and no way to stop the global AIDS pandemic without a vaccine, that's a risk many volunteers say they are willing to take.

WASHINGTON -- It is a terrifying proposition: Inject yourself with a weakened AIDS virus in the hope it will become not the deadly disease, but create the vaccine for it. At least 50 uninfected doctors and activists this week offered themselves up as human guinea pigs, largely to protest the glacial pace of vaccine research.The risks are enormous. The science is unclear. And, should the government approve such a trial, it is almost certain that some of the volunteers will become ill with the human immunodeficiency virus, suffer and die.But, with 8,000 people a day becoming infected with HIV -- most in countries with no access to life-saving drugs -- and no way to stop the global AIDS pandemic without a vaccine, that's a risk many volunteers say they are willing to take.

Born in Jamaica, he had immigrated to England nearly 30 years ago. Settling in the industrial West Midlands town of Birmingham, he learned to like fish and chips, sausages and other salty British foods almost as much as the salt fish, jerk chicken and other high-sodium favorites from his native land.Over the years in his adopted home, he had gained quite a bit of weight, and he knew that he had developed high blood pressure. He was taking medication for it: quinapril, an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE)

A Maryland-based national poultry watchdog association is protesting a Texas Panhandle town's plan to drop live guinea fowl from an airplane as a promotion for a community festival.The Quitaque Chamber of Commerce plans to drop two guineas from a low-flying airplane Saturday during the town's National Trails Day celebration, which celebrates the "Rails to Trails" program that established a trail through Quitaque (pronounced KIT-a-kway).Each of the birds will have a coupon good for $100 attached to its leg, and the person who catches the fowl gets the money.

They were the guinea pigs. They were there to make sure that what had been planned and sketched would be good for the masses and that the project would be a success.Thumbs up on larger family rooms. Thumbs down on protruding garages.Spying from behind a one-way mirror, Jim Joyce, Baltimore division president for Ryland Homes, waited for this final moment.The focus group had checked off everything they wanted in a new home planned for an Ellicott City development. He had a price range in mind, but experience told him that focus groups rarely get it right.