Today's Globe: czar's children, science-faith partnership, breastfeeding, FDA hiring frenzy, blood substitute testing, Merck vaccine plants, Harald Enge

The work of a University of Massachusetts Medical School researcher may have put to rest one of the enduring mysteries of modern Russian history. For nearly nine decades, no one could locate the bodies of Crown Prince Alexei (second from right), the final heir to the Russian throne, and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria (second from left). Now, a preliminary DNA analysis by a professor, Evgeny Rogaev, indicates that bone fragments discovered last year in the Ural Mountains probably belonged to two children of the last czar of Russia.

Nobel laureate scientist Dr. Eric Chivian (right) and evangelical Christian Rev. Richard Cizik formed a partnerhsip to curb negative human impact on the Earth, leading this odd couple of the environmental movement to be named, today, to Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

More than 3 of 4 new mothers now breast-feed their infants, the highest rate in the United States in at least 20 years, according to a government report released yesterday.

The Food and Drug Administration yesterday said it will hire more than 1,300 biologists, chemists, medical officers, and others over the next several months.

Experimental blood substitutes should be tested only in patients at high risk of death, doctors and researchers said at a workshop reviewing the products.

The Food and Drug Administration has ordered Merck & Co. to correct numerous manufacturing deficiencies at its main vaccine plant, the latest in a string of setbacks for the drug maker.

Harald A. Enge (left), a retired MIT physics professor, died April 14 of respiratory failure. He was 87 and lived in Sherborn. Dr. Enge was the longtime director of MIT's Van de Graff research group and was acknowledged by peers, colleagues said, as a world leader in the design of magnetic spectrometers, instruments used to determine the energy spectrum of nuclear particles.