Science on the cutting edge

• Prairie Orchard Farms in Manitoba told Toronto's Globe and Mail in March that it has been successfully infusing hogs with omega-3s, the oils that get the best press among fatty acids, since it is found plentifully in healthful salmon and other seafood. A laboratory analysis of a slab of Prairie Orchard's "enriched" ham had the omega-3s of almost one-fourth of a large salmon filet, but the best news of all was that a 100-gram side of bacon equaled that of the salmon filet.

• While many lab mice get selected, unfortunately, for work like cancer research, one group of male rodents at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston has been hard at work, with constant erections, helping researchers develop a biochemical treatment for priapism, which plagues men with certain blood disorders. (The condition is named for the Greek god Priapus, who, to be punished for sexual misbehavior, supposedly received an enormous, but useless, wooden penis.)

• Sonny Graham of Hilton Head, S.C., committed suicide in April after having spent 13 years with the transplanted heart of suicide victim Terry Cottle. The cellular implication is somewhat less likely, though, because Graham's widow was the same woman who was married to Cottle at the time of his suicide.