Physics and magic aren't often mistaken, but increasingly, physicists themselves seem to be trying to change that. Last year, a team at the University of California, Berkeley, announced that it had developed materials that could lead to an invisibility cloak. Last month, a group of researchers at Harvard University and the National Institutes of Health reported that it had accomplished something not unlike levitation, causing a microscopic sphere of gold to rise above a glass surface. Now, ...

Back when he was establishing his career in investment banking, Roger Barnett made all the right moves: degrees from Harvard and Yale; jobs in London, Paris and New York City; and regular appearances in the society pages along with his wife Sloan. Today Barnett, 43, has a job at a direct-selling company in a nondescript office park about an hour inland from San Francisco. Like most people in direct sales, he has a touch of the evangelist about him. He ...

Cancer stalks the women in Anna Fisher's family. Her grandmother died of "female cancer" -- probably ovarian -- in the 1940s. When Fisher was five, her mother developed breast cancer. After having a mastectomy, the mother survived for a decade, only to die from cancer originating in the other breast. Fisher also has a maternal aunt who had ovarian tumors, and five cousins contracted breast cancer. Malignancy is simply part of her pedigree. So it was no big surprise, though ...

IN his book Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, the author repeatedly prophesied that he would not leave the California prison system alive. Last week the grim prediction came true. In one of the bloodiest prison upheavals in recent years, Jackson—robber, author, radical hero, self-styled revolutionary—was killed while attempting to escape from the California State Prison at San Quentin. With him died three prison guards and two fellow inmates. The bloodletting lasted only a few tragic minutes, but ...

Like his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Governor Jerry Brown is struggling to keep the state afloat in an ocean of red ink. Facing a $26 billion deficit, he warns of "draconian" cuts to education and public safety if the state cannot raise revenue and has to adopt an all-cuts budget. Brown, 72, a Democrat famous for austerity and Buddhist simplicity, would prefer not to go there — but his attempts to court enough Republican support to ...

Amid the throngs of gamblers in Atlantic City, Debra Kim Cohen stood out. A former beauty queen, she dropped thousands of dollars at blackjack tables. Casino managers acknowledged her lavish patronage by plying her with the perks commonly accorded VIP customers: free limo rides, meals, even rooms. Cohen, after all, was a high roller. It apparently did not disturb casino officials that she was also a teenager and -- at 17 -- four years shy of New Jersey's legal gambling ...

This weekend, college basketball will whittle its postseason tournament down to the Final Four. The NFL's owners and players are still fighting, so there may be no football come fall. The NBA playoff push is on. Baseball's opening day, and the Masters, is just around the corner. Oh, and by the way, baseball's home-run king is currently on trial for perjury. I'll place a healthy bet on which story you care about the least. ...

Facing reductions in state funding, public universities from Michigan to Arizona to North Carolina have slashed budgets and hiked tuition. The most extreme case is California where University of California regents voted this week to increase tuition a whopping 32% to more than $10,000 annually — a three-fold increase in a decade. The move was greeted by student demonstrations. During two days of protests at UCLA, where the UC regents met to vote on the fee increase, about 2,000 students from the 10-campus system confronted riot ...

Whatever Leon Panetta lacked in formal intel experience he would make up for with his political smarts. That was one of the chief points made in his favor when the Obama Administration named the former California congressman and Clinton White House chief of staff as its first CIA Director. So many CIA veterans were particularly not happy over the summer when they felt that Panetta had failed to protect the Agency from the political backlash over its Bush-era detention ...

A search was on Thursday night for nine people left missing after a Coast Guard plane collided with a Marine helicopter over the Pacific Ocean near Southern California, officials said.