Today's Globe: spotting a terrorist, seasonal flu vaccine, Bowdoin flu cases, swine flu seniors, MIT honor, health bill tax, coughing mystery, Senate health bill, brands

Metal detectors, X-ray machines, and dogs are used at security checkpoints to look for bombs. Now a next-generation technology under development in Cambridge will look for the bomber.

Shipments of vaccine against seasonal influenza are arriving slower than expected in Massachusetts, a delay that is likely to cause some inoculation drives to be postponed.

More than 100 Bowdoin College students have reported flulike symptoms since the start of the academic year, but the Brunswick college says more than half have recovered and are back in classes (fourth item).

Seniors who for years have made flu shots a fall ritual are being sent to the end of the line for the swine flu vaccine. And the reason - their age group seems to have a bit of immunity - appears to have warded off most potential grumbling.

JoAnne Stubbe, the first woman to receive tenure in the MIT chemistry department, will be one of nine scientists to receive the nation’s top science honor, President Obama announced yesterday.

Unhappy Senate Democrats found plenty to complain about yesterday in the fine print of the latest health overhaul bill, particularly a tax provision they fear would hit hard at middle-class Americans, from coal miners in West Virginia to firefighters in New York.

Doctors say a North Carolina man who was plagued with coughing fits should be OK now that they have removed a 1-inch piece of plastic from his lung, where it had rested since he apparently inhaled it nearly two years ago while drinking a soft drink at a Wendy’s restaurant.

"While the bill that [Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max] Baucus offered Wednesday is encouraging in a way - it endorses the goal of universal coverage and includes some crucial building blocks of a reform package - it gives away too many reforms that would help hold down costs for the public and increase access to care," a Globe editorial says.

Lipitor "is precisely the kind of product that lies straight in the cross hairs of health care reformers on both the left and the right," Alex Beam writes in a column that begins with Skippy peanut butter and ends with the Lunesta moth. "No one says it’s a bad drug; it’s just too darned expensive."