Ranching and physics — an unlikely combination.

One Baylor researcher unites his two passions into a lifetime of work that has recently earned him a national award.

Dr. Marlan O. Scully, distinguished researcher at Baylor and member of the National Academy of Sciences, will receive the 2012 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus Quinn Prize, the highest award given by the Optical Society of America, for his work in quantum optics.

As the Supreme Court revisits the use of race in college admissions next week, critics of affirmative action are hopeful the justices will roll back the practice. A new report out Wednesday offers a big reason for their optimism: evidence from at least some of the nine states that don’t use affirmative action that leading public universities can bring meaningful diversity to their campuses through race-neutral means.

U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.
But there may be a silver lining: The decline in 2011 was just 1 percent — not as sharp a fall-off as the 2 to 3 percent drop seen in other recent years.

“It may be that the effect of the recession is slowly coming to an end,” said Carl Haub, a senior demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.

Most striking in the new report were steep declines in Hispanic birth rates and a new low in teen births.

In war-torn Sierra Leone, a young girl’s rape goes unnoticed. Rape is normal and socially acceptable, so when the horrifying experience is brought to authorities, the investigation never takes them from their desks. The young girl is merely another number.

Women’s rights are a universal issue of debate, although in some countries such as Somaliland, in which one in 14 women will die in childbirth because they lack the proper health care, the matter is more serious.