Primer

Stem cells are a hot topic among biotech businesses and on Capital Hill ? where the new Congress is again considering a bill to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. But there?s still a lot of confusion among the public about what the cells are, what they can do and from where they come. ?I don?t think most people understand the science ? there?s an awful lot we don?t understand yet,? said Dale Carlson, spokesman for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which was created to help administer $3 billion in stem cell funding for the state?

No need to be embarrassed. You're probably not the only one in Baltimore who just figured out that the Ravens are in the playoffs and everybody at work is going to be talking about them and, well, it's going to be a little uncomfortable at the water cooler if you don't develop a rudimentary understanding of the NFL in relatively short order. Sure, you know that Johnny U. used to be a big deal around here and you've seen Brian Billick hanging around the quantum physics stacks at the library over at Johns Hopkins, but you wouldn't know a linebacker from the Wichita Lineman Glen Campbell used to sing about and you probably think the "Tuck Rule" is part of the NFL's dress code.

Shortly after 6 p.m., parents began trickling into the Homestead/Wakefield Elementary School in Bel Air. Principal Dale Hunsinger and Assistant Principal Eric Laughlin greeted them at the door. A few feet away, a line formed for parents who were asking parent volunteers Lisa Roberts and Kaelyn Lamas about volunteer opportunities. In the classrooms, teachers prepared packets of information, writing notes on chalkboards and preparing overhead projections for the visiting parents. It was back-to-school night, an annual ritual at Homestead/Wakefield that will be repeated at all 51 county schools.

What's the difference between fresh pasta and dried pasta? The term "fresh" generally refers to pasta made by hand with soft wheat flour and eggs. "Dried" implies a factory-made product made from hard wheat moistened only with water. What is most important to understand, however, is that neither type of pasta is superior to the other. Scholar Clifford Wright theorizes that what is known as dried pasta first was made around 1000, possibly in Sicily. Water and hard wheat flour were kneaded into a paste (pasta is Italian for paste)

There you are in the drugstore aisle trying to decide what sunscreen to buy for summer 2006. Should it be the bronzer SPF 15, the ultra sunblock SPF 30, the maximum lotion SPF 50, the sunscreen cream with vitamins A, C and E or the quick-dry sports spray? Waterproof or sweat proof? And those are just a few of the many choices one brand offers. Dr. Karen Scully, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Dermatology and Cosmetic Center, makes it simple for her patients. She tells them to buy a broad-spectrum sunblock.

With the second phase of Baltimore's public housing desegregation case set to begin Monday, I spent part of last weekend reading Alexander Polikoff's recently published book, Waiting for Gautreaux. The book, whose title is a play on words on Samuel Beckett's existential play Waiting for Godot, is an account of Chicago's Gautreaux housing case, the granddaddy of housing desegregation cases. Polikoff was the principal lawyer for public housing residents. The Gautreaux case looms in the background of the Baltimore case, in which U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis ruled last year that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development violated fair-housing laws by failing to take a regional approach to the desegregation of public housing in the city and is now holding a bench trial to decide what to do about it. Filed in 1966, Gautreaux took until 1998 to reach its eventually agreed-upon goal of helping 7,100 Chicago public housing families move to economically and racially integrated areas of the Chicago metropolitan area.

DETROIT -- Every year in the Super Bowl host city, some enterprising newspaper editor comes up with the same brilliant idea. How about a football primer for all the people in town who don't know a slotback from a slot machine? This "Football for Dummies" feature - and I think we did one when the Ravens played in the Super Bowl - is intended largely for women, though it would not go over very well if they called it "Football for Women and Dummies," so everybody has to act as though there are just as many men who sidle over to the television on Super Bowl Sunday and ask why the players wear such tight pants.

The O.C., Fox's Thursday night teen soap, is a show about class struggle, modern families, what happens when you take too many pills in Tijuana and, more than anything,relationships.And the relationship central to The O.C. is the one between Ryan Atwood and Seth Cohen,the male leads from different worlds who become best friends. Seth has lived in a palatial seaside home in Newport Beach,Calif.,without ever feeling like he fit in.He's into comic books and Clash records, not water polo. Ryan is the blond, brooding bad boy Seth's family adopted.

Home Tip-- Warm Colors-- If you repaint your cast-iron radiators, use an oil primer and a dark oil enamel. Darker colors mean more efficient heating.