Theories abound as to why women’s cups seem to be (forgive the pun) spilling over. Some ascribe the difference to a confluence of health and beauty trends that have accelerated over time. A 2007 study of adult women by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the prevalence of obesity — someone having a body mass index of 30 or more — has increased 2.1 percent since 2004, to 35.3 percent. Breast augmentation, too, is still a popular procedure, despite the recession. And age and hormones play havoc with baby boomers’ bust sizes, as well. But most manufacturers and lingerie shop owners say the phenomenon is due to the fact that more women are being fitted correctly. They call it the Oprah effect. Since 2005, when Oprah Winfrey devoted a show to how to buy the right size bra, the number of women seeking bra fittings has soared.

“This is the biggest and most adhesive honor The Simpsons has ever received,” said Matt Groening, creator and executive producer of The Simpsons.

In the Anishinabe tradition, women fetch the water. So, in 2003, when Mandamin was "moved by the spirits" to speak out for the Great Lakes, it was natural for her to pick up her copper pail and start walking. She decided to circle the lakes and tell people that "the water is sick ... and people need to really fight for that water, to speak for that water, to love that water."

Every spring since, Mandamin and a small band of followers have walked around one of the lakes. Next weekend they depart from the Katarokwi Native Friendship Centre here to walk up the St. Lawrence River. Their mission will end where the lakes' water pours into the Atlantic Ocean (bearing so much poison that a quarter of the male beluga whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have cancer).

At every tributary, Mandamin stops and talks directly to the water, offering prayers, tobacco and thanks. "I've heard so many times, `You're crazy...'" she says. "But we know it's not a crazy thing we're doing; we know it's for the betterment of the next generations."

More than a decade ago, Cheng and fellow NC State forestry professor Anne-Marie Stomp wondered whether fast-growing duckweed, commonly seen in shallow ponds, might remediate animal waste. Excrement from the billions of animals raised every year in America's factory farms has fouled watersheds, especially in the South, and fed oxygen-gobbling algae blooms responsible for rapidly-spreading coastal dead zones.

Duckweed, they discovered, has an appetite for animal waste, quickly converting it to leafy starch that can then be converted into ethanol. The current source for most U.S. ethanol is industrial-scale corn farming, which requires large amounts of toxic pesticides and dead zone-feeding, fuel-intensive fertilizers. When the costs are added up, corn-based ethanol may prove little cleaner than gasoline.