science and technology

Letters have been flowing in so let's get to the inbox and answer some questions.Q. Your column last week talked about AVG Free Edition (anti-virus) and how it expired. Mine did not expire at the end of May and is still working it appears. Should I upgrade to the new edition?

I have been bombarded with questions about AVG's free anti-virus program, which periodically expires in an effort to sell the commercial (non-free version) to unsuspecting consumers.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Chemotherapy helped cure Melinda Dutton's breast cancer, but it left her with a badly damaged heart.Bruce Ogden, who survived prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, lives with feminizing changes to his body from drugs he took to block testosterone that would have accelerated the malignancy.

Now that the Phoenix has landed, what's next on Mars?Nothing less, over the coming months and years, than trying to answer a very big question: whether we are alone in the universe.Scientists say if they can prove some form of life began independently on Mars, they'll have an answer.But the steps to finding it are slow, careful and methodical.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Global warming could release long-dormant stores of methane gas trapped beneath the Arctic permafrost, causing an abrupt and catastrophic climate change like one that occurred 635 million years ago, University of California Riverside researchers have determined.

AMERICAN FORK, Utah -- The students of American Fork High School get up pretty early to discover an asteroid.

Microsoft is boldly going where the company has never gone before (and I am tempted to say "an operating system that won't crash") but instead I will say "into space."

Boom BloxPlatform: Wii.Genre: Puzzle.Publisher: EA Games.ESRB Rating: E for Everyone.Grade: 3.5 stars.

SAN FRANCISCO -- When powerful earthquakes strike anywhere in the world, their seismic waves go rippling through the ground and trigger smaller quakes thousands of miles away where no one had ever expected them, scientists have discovered.

U.S. advertisers spent nearly $500 per American last year. But what makes one ad persuasive and another a dud?Two Bay Area firms have adapted brain scanning technology to find out.