Today's Globe: health plan rankings, drowsy driving, gorilla colonoscopy, bullies, test tube chemicals, Dr. Henry Schnidek

For the fourth consecutive year, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care is the best commercial health plan in the nation, according to US News & World Report magazine and the National Committee for Quality Assurance For the second straight year, Tufts Health Plan was ranked number two, with a score just slightly lower than Harvard Pilgrim's. Other high scorers included Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, ranked ninth nationwide, down from fourth last year; and Fallon Community Health Plan, ranked 18th, compared with 12th place last year.

When a drowsy driver starts resorting to turning up the car radio and cracking the window to try to stay awake, it is a sign that the motorist should not be behind the wheel, a Harvard researcher yesterday told a state committee considering whether to beef up laws to address the dangers of falling asleep on the road.

Gigi, the oldest gorilla at the Franklin Park Zoo, became the zoo's first gorilla to undergo a colonoscopy, with help from physicians from Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Brain scans of teens with a history of bullying behavior suggest that they may actually get pleasure out of seeing someone else in pain, researchers said yesterday.

Plastic test-tubes and dishes used in laboratories are made with chemicals that can disrupt reactions and could be botching experiments worldwide, scientists said in the journal Science (second item).

Dr. Henry H. Schmidek - who for 45 years had filled posts at a variety of medical venues and universities, including Massachusetts General Hospital, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., and as a ship's doctor in the US Navy - died of a heart attack on October 26 at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England. He was 71.