Religous Services

Amid a backdrop of food booths, South Vietnamese flags and altars, more than 5,000 Vietnamese gathered Sunday to hear religious leaders and celebrate the 2,544th anniversary of Buddha's birth. For Dat Quach, an engineer from San Diego, it marked an opportunity to travel to Santa Ana College with his two young sons and have them embrace the celebration as part of their introduction to the Buddhist faith.

Amid a backdrop of food booths, South Vietnamese flags and altars, more than 5,000 Vietnamese gathered Sunday to hear religious leaders and celebrate the 2,544th anniversary of Buddha's birth. For Dat Quach, an engineer from San Diego, it marked an opportunity to travel to Santa Ana College with his two young sons and have them embrace the celebration as part of their introduction to the Buddhist faith.

Last week, as the 2012 election season heated up, three researchers reported on American attitudes toward federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Their conclusion: If American politicians listen to majority opinion, federal funding for stem cell funding is more secure than if they heed the party lines, in which case the field may be in for more turmoil. Robert J. Blendon, Minah Kang Kim and John M. Benson, all affiliated with the Harvard School of Public Health, wrote the perspective article, which was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.  The piece described a polling review project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.