August 23, 2005

At a recent scientific conference at City College of New York, a student in the audience rose to ask the panelists an unexpected question: ''Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?'' Reaction from one of the panelists, all Nobel laureates, was quick and sharp. ''No!'' declared Herbert A. Hauptman, who shared the chemistry prize in 1985 for his work on the structure of crystals.

Jon Pareles pays tribute to Robert Moog, inventor of electronic synthesizer that revolutionized music, who has died at age 71; photo (M)

In a tartly worded ruling, a federal judge ordered the Bloomberg administration yesterday to reinstate a permit for a block party in Chelsea featuring the painting of graffiti on mock subway cars. The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan, called the city's abrupt cancellation of the permit unconstitutional. He even poked fun at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's argument that the party would incite the defacement of real subway cars.

At 10 a.m. one Saturday in July, a few weeks after he finished his medical residency at Brown University, Ronak Shah married Kunal Patel, another doctor, in a union that embraced every ritual of the Hindu nuptial script. Dr. Shah arrived at the Hanover Marriott in Whippany, N.J., by horse and carriage. He wore a traditional sherwani. And he greeted, before all others, his bride's mother, in a gesture that signified the importance of parental engineering in Indian marriage.

Jamika Burge is heading back to Virginia Tech this fall to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science, but her research is spiced with anthropology, sociology, psychology, psycholinguistics -- as well as observing cranky couples trade barbs in computer instant messages. ''It's so not programming,'' Ms. Burge said. ''If I had to sit down and code all day, I never would have continued. This is not traditional computer science.''