Tufts gets a $2.5-million grant to study the effects of living next to a major highway in both Chinatown and Somerville:

... As part of the study, to be known as the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH), participants will be asked to submit written surveys and blood samples to be tested for evidence of heart and lung disease. "Many people live close to I-93 and I-95, and they may well be exposed to these tiny particles, but they aren't aware of it," says Bart Laws, PhD, senior investigator at the Latin American Health Institute. "The particles are invisible and odorless.” ...

The Globe reports on state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson's desire to avoid another embarrassment like two years ago, when she, oops, forgot to file her nomination petitions on time. The paper writes:

This year, Wilkerson qualified for the primary ballot with a whopping 3,000 signatures, 10 times the amount she needed.

Not quite. As Linda Rodriguez at the South End News reports, Wilkerson actually only qualified with 428 signatures, just one more than her opponent, Sonia Chang-Diaz. This doesn't mean the remainder of her 3,000 signatures were bad, necessarily, just that elections officials stopped looking after a certain point.

Take a trip to Chinatown, Will Ng reports.

Liam posts some before and after photos and info about Greenway tours and volunteer groups.

Will Ng photographs all the vacant storefronts in the neighborhood.

Will Ng photographs the city vehicle cruising Chinatown, taking photos of license plates with its four cameras, no doubt in search of cars with enough tickets to warrant a visit from Captain Boot.

Will Ng reports the hole in the ground at Washington and LaGrange that was supposed to become a 26-story building is still a hole in the ground, but now it's filled with white gravel instead of just dirt.

If you insist on taking yours into a Chinatown restaurant and then using it as you sit at the bar, don't be surprised if it disappears when you leave it there to visit the restroom. And then be thankful if the alleged thieves are even dumber than you are.

Also click on the link to read about a polite purse snatcher in the South End:

... According to the victim, she was walking along when the suspect came up from behind her, tapped her on the shoulder and stated, "Excuse me .. can I have this?" At this point, the suspect grabbed her purse and took off.

Jeff Hovis, who lives in Chinatown, tells the BRA exactly what he thinks of the office tower it approved for the Dainty Dot site.

To get to the other side of town before police realized he'd set an Audi on fire.