More bad news for the world's oceans: Dead zones--areas of bottom waters too oxygen depleted to support most ocean life--are spreading, dotting nearly the entire east and south coasts of the U.S. as well as several west coast river outlets.

According to a new study in Science, the rest of the world fares no better--there are now 405 identified dead zones worldwide, up from 49 in the 1960s--and the world's largest dead zone remains the Baltic Sea, whose bottom waters now lack oxygen year-round.

Reconstructing the Very First CellUnlike modern cells, with their mitochondria, pores, nuclei and such, the very first cell, which emerged some 3.5 billion years ago, was simple. It probably consisted of just a membrane with genetic information inside--raising the question of how it could take in nutrients and reproduce. Harvard Medical School researchers have built a model of what the first cell may have looked like. Using fatty acids that likely existed on a primeval Earth, they created a membrane porous enough to let in nutrients but strong enough to protect the genetic material inside. In a test tube of water, the fatty acids formed into a ring around a strip of DNA. The investigators also added nucleotides--units of genetic material--which entered the cell, latched onto the DNA and replicated it over 24 hours. Scientists now must figure out how the original and copycat DNA strands can separate, which would enable the cell to divide and reproduce. The study turned up in the June 12 Nature.

I am a New Age skeptic. I used to be a New Age cynic, so this change shows how far I have come in opening my mind to things I do not understand. I no longer dismiss channeling and crystals and acupuncture as so much hocus-pocus, nor do I embrace these practices. I simply await proof.

I have to admit, though, that there is one New Age practice that has always had some intuitive appeal to me, and that’s feng shui. Feng shui is the ancient Chinese art of placement, which is based on the belief that space and distance and the arrangement of objects can affect our emotions and our sense of well-being. This idea makes sense to me on a gut level: I know that I feel a greater sense of psychological equilibrium in some spaces than I do in others. I just do not know why.