The volcano Mount Vesuvius has erupted multiple times in recorded history, most recently in 1944 and most notoriously in the year 79, when it destroyed the Italian city of Pompeii. Some vulcanologists fear it may be preparing to do so again, with explosive consequences.

French researchers say they have detected significant upward movement of the volcano's magma chamber. Generally speaking, a higher, shallower chamber presents less of a hazard because the magma is under less pressure and less likely to erupt explosively. But researchers don't know what sort of magma is rising toward the surface. If it contains lots of water, it will be highly volatile and more likely to produce an eruption similar to the big bang that smothered Pompeii.

That possibility is worrying some scientists, not to mention the million or so residents of Naples, which sits near the volcano.

HAVE A MICE DAY

Think you're having a rough life? Consider the lab mouse.

Harper's magazine reports that scientists have bred two new races of mice: one is lazy, and the other features males with a worse sense of direction than females. Researchers have given mice aggressive cancers, then slowed the tumor growth with vitamin C injections. They have exposed hairless mice to large doses of UV light, discovering that animals wearing commercial skin moisturizers were more likely to develop melanomas. They have found that alcoholic mice forced to stop drinking no longer swim when placed in a beaker of water, suggesting perhaps that the mice are depressed.

If you were a lab mouse, you probably would be, too.

VERBATIM

"The rational approach didn't happen."

— NASA administrator Mike Griffin in an e-mail to senior staff members describing the Bush administration's insistence on retiring the space shuttle before a replacement is ready for liftoff

BRAIN SWEAT

If an EGGSHELL amounts to 77345663, what vehicle is worth 461375? Hint: You'll need a calculator.

PRIME NUMBERS

1 in 4 — Chance that an American lives within four miles of an EPA Superfund site

1 in 2 — Chance that an American lives within 10 miles of one

300 — Estimated revenue, in dollars, from ethanol that a quarter-acre of Iowa farmland can earn per year

10,000 - Estimated revenue, in dollars, each year with a wind turbine on that quarter-acre

5-10 — Estimated loss of gray brain matter, as a percentage, in post-traumatic stress disorder victims

Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Earth Policy Institute; Harper's

BRAIN SWEAT ANSWER

SLEIGH. Type 461375 into a calculator, turn it upside down and read the numbers.

ELECTRON INK

Satellite Tracker

spaceweather.com/flybys

If you happen to be stargazing, see something whoosh by and wonder if you've just seen a UFO, start the identification process here. Type in your ZIP code and you get a list of satellites and space vehicles that may be visibly passing overhead.

If the UFO remains unidentified, phone home.

JUST ASKING

Why is experience something you don't get until after you need it?

THE MOLE TRUTH

A recent joke in Eureka about moles left some readers unhappy with the explanation of a mole — the mathematical kind.

According to Stephen Strauss, author of "The Sizesaurus," a mole is the mass in grams of a sample that contains the same number of elementary particles (atoms, ions, molecules) as 12 grams of carbon. Its numerical equivalent is the atomic or molecular weight of that sample. A mole of anything contains exactly the same number of molecules as a mole of anything else. That number is 6.022 x 1023, otherwise known as "Avogadro's number."

This is a big number, says Strauss. It is the equivalent of a hundred billion times the age of the universe in years, or the number of pennies you could give to 5 billion people and make each of them a multitrillionaire.

The joke also referred to moles of the biological sort. By definition, they are any of the various small, burrowing insectivores characterized by small eyes and ears, shovel-like forefeet and soft fur.

It is not known how many moles make up a mole.

OUR IG NOBEL HISTORY

For those highly trained and so inclined, sword swallowing isn't so dangerous, according to a seminal paper on the practice: "Sword Swallowing and its Side-effects," published last year in the British Medical Journal.

Where problems do occur, concluded authors Brian Witcombe of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust in the United Kingdom, and Dan Meyer, executive director of the Sword Swallowers Association International, they tend to be when practitioners try swallowing too many swords simultaneously or the blades are strangely shaped.

Witcombe and Meyer also found that it's not good to swallow swords when you have a sore throat.

For their deep and probing research, Witcombe and Meyer received the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize for medicine.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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