Titanium

Golfers are sick people. Every one of us has the same recurring fantasy: If only we had better equipment, we'd stop slicing our drives into the next area code and shanking 3-irons and sending bunker shots screaming over the green like SAM missiles. Pretty soon we'd be driving the ball 300 yards down the middle and sticking 50-yard wedge shots within 2 feet of the pin and all our putts would start dropping. And then in a few months, we'd be good enough to qualify for the PGA Tour and a short while later, hell, we'd be breathing down the necks of the big boys, Tiger Woods and Mark O'Meara and Tom Lehman and that choking dog, Greg Norman.

ELCIEGO, SPAIN / / The theatrical, floor-to-ceiling, merlot-colored drapes at the Marques de Riscal would suit a production of Hedda Gabler or Hamlet. But this is not a tragedy. This is a guestroom at the first and only hotel designed by Frank Gehry. When the curtains part at the push of a button, you see a picture window with angular contours, erratically tilted panes and a zigzagging window seat. The undercarriage of the roof, wrapped in pink, gold and silver titanium ribbons, is visible in the foreground, and in the distance lies the sleepy stone village of Elciego, surrounded by soldierly vineyards of northern Spain's Rioja wine country.

JVC's new hand-held e-mail device, the HC-E100 PocketMail ($129.95) is the first glimpse at a new generation of e-mail appliances we'll be seeing in the coming year. The HC-E100 uses Pocket Science's PocketMail technology which is also being licensed to Sharp and other makers of personal digital assistants and hand-held computers.The beauty of the HC-E100 is certainly not its catchy name. It's designed to send and receive e-mail from any type of phone (cellular, office phone, digital hotel phone, etc.)

You have written columns suggesting use of sunscreens with microparticles of zinc or titanium. I read that some scientists are concerned about nanoparticles found in products such as sunscreen. These particles are so tiny, they could get into places in our bodies that larger particles can't. No one knows how dangerous this might be, but some experts suggest we exercise caution and avoid nanotechnology in products such as sunscreen. Shouldn't you warn people about the danger? The Environmental Working Group is a collaborative group of scientists that first raised a red flag about nanoparticles in sunscreens.

His name is Joe and he's a friend. But he is also an addict. You wouldn't know it to look at him. Family man, regular job, house, mortgage, receding hairline.But there are hundreds of thousands just like him in this country. At one time, he would have denied his addiction. Now he is open about it. He laughs bitterly when describing the inner demon he can't control."This is the time of year when it gets the worst," he said. "Let me tell you what happened the other day."I went to this place.

COLLEGE PARK -- They were master builders of mass destruction, the chief architects of the 30,000 atomic and hydrogen warheads the former Soviet Union placed on the scales in the Cold War's balance of terror.Yesterday, these engineers and physicists came to the University of Maryland to make deals, not war.Speaking to about 50 U.S. corporate and government officials, scientists from Russia's Institute for Technical Physics in the once-secret town of Chelyabinsk-70 -- where two-thirds of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was designed -- pleaded for "foreign partners" for non-military business ventures.

Terrorist threat or not, Lorraine Lewis of Baltimore was determined to get to her hair stylist in Laurel yesterday for her regular cut and curl. "No, no, no - I am not going to cancel this appointment," Lewis, 32, said as she waited in her Hyundai sedan on a ramp leading to the Fort McHenry Tunnel - desperate for some salon TLC. She was among thousands of motorists who found themselves stuck yesterday when the approaches to two of Baltimore Harbor's three...

Sailing around the world hasn't always been a pursuit for the weight-conscious.The first ship to circumnavigate the globe, a tubby three-masted Spanish carrack named the Victoria, rolled across the Pacific in 1520 with the following list of equipment: "heavy mortars, wall smashers, 70 crossbows, 50 muskets, 100 suits of armor, 360 dozen crossbow bolts, 1,000 lances and 200 pikes. Fifty quintals of gunpowder and lots of lead."The yachts competing in this year's Whitbread Round the World Race, which stops off in Baltimore and Annapolis this week and next on the way to the finish line in England, are the same length as the ships in Ferdinand Magellan's fleet.

Thanks to 3D printing, American society may be about to boldly go where no one has gone before. A Johns Hopkins scientist is seeking to adapt the technology to grow human jaw bones - potentially revolutionizing implant procedures. A Halethorpe entrepreneur created a 3D model of a blind woman that allowed her to "see" herself for the first time. And the technique's potential to aid visual arts and science museums is a featured part of the three-day American Alliance of Museums conference in the Inner Harbor.

Sherrie Walter will never wear earrings again, but recently started styling her hair in a ponytail the way she used to before she was diagnosed with skin cancer nearly four years ago. It's a big step for Walter, whose life was turned upside down when doctors finally figured out the persistent sore in her ear was actually basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of cancer. By then it had spread so much that the Bel Air mother of two had to have part of her skull and most of her left ear removed.