What does a Stuyvesant High grad who won the Siemens Competition prize for outstanding high school science project do these days? Study worms of course. Yin Li won the $100,000 scholarship in 2003 for his study of how certain proteins in the brain "might control the capacity of nerve cells to undergo local protein synthesis". Such a mechanism might be related to memory and learning. According to the Daily News Li is now a junior......

Ayun Halliday, an East Village fixture and food blogger has been making the rounds on the Internets in a virtual book tour in support of her fourth memoir,Dirty Sugar Cookies, Culinary Observations, Questionable Taste. Previously, she has written about travel in No Touch Monkey!, work in Jobhopper and motherhood in The Big Rumpus. A longtime contributor to BUST, where she writes the Mother Superior column, she has an irreverant (and almost ADHD influenced) take on......

NBC will officially announce that Meredith Vieira will be the new Today Show co-anchor, filling Katie Couric's 7AM to somewhere in the 9-10AM area shoes, later this afternoon, though Vieira announced the move during The View this morning. Newsday's Verne Gay says that Meredith Vieira might be the most perfect replacement for Couric ever, which could be good or bad. But the biggest fun is asking people what they think of the move. Should Katie......

Jen made an appearance on NBC's Dateline last night to talk about the tragic murder of graduate student Imette St. Guillen (screencaps at Random Observations.) For Dateline viewers who want to read Gothamist's posts on the case, here they are: February 27: Mysterious Deaths from this Weekend February 28: Grad Student Was Strangled and Suffocated March 1: Grad Student's Murder Scares City March 2: St. Guillen Seen At Another SoHo Bar Before Murder March......

A reader writes: Within 24 hours, I've been effected by two manhole fires, with the first killing my power on Flatbush in Park Slope yesterday, and the second blocking my lunch route on Rector St today. Has anyone else reported any, is there something going on?Maybe it's the combination of tons of snow and pure New York City heat? Maybe the city ran out of manhole epoxy. Manhole season started later last year. And a......

The local news channels had been working themselves into a frenzy since last Thursday (well, we were, too) and it paid off yesterday when there was a hell of a lot of snow on the ground. Even Meet the Press was pre-empted for local snow coverage! Gothamist thinks we heard Al Roker's heart breaking as he broadcast from Torino this morning, because he was missing this awesome weather event - it was the lead story......

Toby at Random Observations captured this great moment in local TV news: Sue Simmons doing her best groundhog impression during the Live at Five broadcast, writing, "It is something that I always look forward to every year." When Gothamist caught the 11PM broadcast, Chuck Scarborough created quite a fanfare for Simmons to repeat the impression. And suddenly we realized that while WNBC mentioned Punxsutawny Phil, they neglected to mention another Chuck - Staten Island Chuck......

Now that the snow is a slushy, disgusting mess, Gothamist has distance from this morning's troublesome commute (note to self: Wear wading boots and carry snow boots). But Toby at Random Observations has amazing analysis of the local news' weather coverage. Crazy graphics? Check. Maps of snowfall? Check. School closing alerts? Check. Not only did CBS take honors for being in "Weather Orgasm mode," "Dave Price made an appearance making a fool out of himself......

God, we love Fox 5! After 20 years, they are still the place to turn for hilariously low-budget local news. Example: yesterday, while Matt Lauer was galavanting around on Easter Island (today, he was in Panama), they sent weatherman Mike Woods to the glamorous and mysterious destination of Fort Totten, Queens (via Random Observations). Where should they send Mike next?......

The city will be starting the Integrated Pest Management Academy, aka The School Where People Will Learn How To Get Rid of Rats, with a federal grant from the CDC. The college will teach "exterminators, rodent inspectors and other city workers better ways to get rid of rats." In the press conference, Assistant Commissioner for veterinary and pest control services, Edgar Butts, said that the biggest misconception of catching rats is that you leave bait......

The NY Post reports on a Bronx woman who received $65,000 in a settlement after her bathroom roof collapsed while she was showering. Now, that sounds good, $65,000 for a roof collapse, but when the roof collapsed, RATS fell down too. - maybe a half dozen rats. For the love of everything that is pure and good in this world, we do not wish this upon anyone. Maybe if Gothamist were in Fear Factor, we......

If Robert Sullivan's riveting Times magazine article about city rats scared the bejesus out of you (an eleven inch rat, with a ten inch tail...shudder), Gothamist offers you this sweet tale: A sanitation worker came across a litter of day-old black Labrador puppies in Queens. At first, Stephen Falk thought the puppies, freezing behind a Dumpster, might be rats: "I looked down near my feet, blinked, took a second look, then a third, and decided......