Today's Globe: lobster seeding, measles, abortion, Medicare gap, movie smoking, face transplants, child schizophrenia, blood donors, irradiated food, trauma costs

In an effort to preserve the fabled catch of New England, biologists and fishermen are seeding the ocean with baby lobsters.

Measles cases in the United States are at the highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of those involving children whose parents rejected vaccination, health officials reported yesterday.

The Bush administration announced plans yesterday to implement a controversial regulation designed to protect doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who object to abortion from being forced to deliver services that violate their personal beliefs.

Many people in Medicare with diabetes, high blood pressure, and other chronic conditions stop taking their medicine when faced with picking up the entire cost of their prescriptions, researchers say.

Tobacco promotions and depictions of smoking in movies cause teenagers to start smoking, according to a sweeping report on tobacco in the media released yesterday.

Face transplants may seem like science fiction, but doctors say the experimental surgeries could one day become routine.

Pregnant women who live through wars are more likely to give birth to a child who develops schizophrenia, US researchers reported yesterday in a study linking prenatal stress with the mental illness (second item).

Mark Chonofsky, a 16-year-old from Lexington, is leading a campaign to lower the minimum age for blood donors from 17 to 16, winning passage yesterday in the House of a bill he drafted himself.

Consumers may soon be able to buy fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce zapped with just enough radiation to kill E. coli and a few other germs.

"On the same day that Moody's rating agency declared that runaway medical costs are making the Massachusetts universal health plan unsustainable, Tufts Medical Center in Boston announced a plan to become a state-designated trauma center," a Globe editorial says. "If Boston were lacking in trauma centers, the investment would make sense, but the city already has four.... It needs another trauma center like it needs another sports bar."