Today's Globe: 'genius grants,' BMC CEO pay, reiki, flu shots, CIA methods

Four people from Massachusetts have won “genius" grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A Boston student who co-founded Project HEALTH, a nonprofit that runs “family help desks’’ in clinics in six cities; an applied mathematician who brings the tools of mathematics to everything from skin wrinkling to tightrope walking; an economist who measures the effect of social and economic policies on people’s lives in developing countries; and a climate scientist working to understand past climate change.

A year before Boston Medical Center reported its first loss in five years, the hospital paid its chief executive, Elaine Ullian, $3.5 million in deferred compensation on top of her $1.35 million salary and benefits, according to a recent filing with the state attorney general’s office.

Last spring the US Conference of Catholic Bishops announced that reiki - the Japanese hands-on healing technique hailed by many as therapy, derided by others as quackery - would no longer be practiced in the church’s hospitals and retreat centers. Reiki, according to the bishops, is not grounded in science or Christianity and is therefore inappropriate for Catholic institutions.

Studies of the new swine flu vaccine show that children 10 and older will need just one shot for protection, but that younger children almost certainly will need two.

The CIA’s harsh interrogations are likely to have damaged the brains of terrorist suspects, diminishing their ability to recall and provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper.