By DAVID TEMPLETON, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In West Virginia, which has the nation's highest rate of tobacco use, officials are spitting mad about R.J. Reynolds test-marketing a new smokeless product in two college towns.The Winston-Salem, N.C., tobacco company is testing Camel Snus in Morgantown and Charleston with plans to market it nationwide early next year as a product that can be used where smoking is prohibited.

An 18-pound macaque monkey bit and then mauled the hand of a University of Pittsburgh laboratory technician last week, prompting accusations from the victim and her co-worker that the facility lacks sufficient safety measures.

University of Pittsburgh researcher Joe Boudreau was awake all night watching history unfold on a video display he helped create that shows CERN's Large Hadron Collider in action.Wednesday morning about 4:28 a.m., scientists steered the first proton beam around the 17-mile underground loop that straddles the border of France and Switzerland.

WEIRTON, W.Va. -- This West Virginia town has something in common with Key West, Fla., and it's not beaches, climate or steel.Both places share a problem with feathered fowl that crow loudly, make big messes and beg the classic question of why they crossed the road.

PITTSBURGH -- Shannon Roland has a son with Type 1 diabetes who must watch his diet and take six blood-glucose readings and five injections of insulin every day.So she said she'll do anything necessary to prevent her other three sons from developing the disease, which can have a genetic link.

A simple hand-operated rock crusher built at the University of Pittsburgh stands to improve the wellbeing of an entire Ugandan village.Nothing fancy here -- just a routine mechanical device that requires two sets of human hands to spin flywheels to crush rock.

PITTSBURGH -- On Good Friday Samantha Moschetta received a double lung transplant.And days later, for the first time in years, she was able to walk far enough from Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh to buy Italian ice and chai tea.The 17-year-old Penn Hills girl returned home on a recent Friday as an example of transplant success.

It's not the time involved but the pleasures imparted. And all those claims that a satisfactory sexual experience must last hours -- or all night long -- involve more bragging than reality.

Crusher is the kind of robotic juggernaut people might expect to see in action thrillers.It rolls over cars, climbs low walls and negotiates the rockiest terrain -- and does so autonomously. What this robot can't climb over it goes around. One almost expects to see the Fantastic Four walking beside it.

Will Cross has skied to the North and South poles and scaled the highest peaks on seven continents, including Mount Everest.But he isn't your average adventurer. The 40-year-old Pittsburgh man must overcome risks other explorers don't even have to consider.Cross has type 1 diabetes.