Grocery chains like Whole Foods and the growing network of farmers' markets, of which there are now 4,000, are the new theaters of this handmade indulgence. — Kim Severson

SCIENCE — GUESS WHAT'S IN THE NEW TEST TUBES

Here is what will, or won't, happen in science and medicine in 2006:

— A new era of personalized medicine will take off. Gene sequencing will be so cheap and easy that the way will be cleared for your doctor to determine what diseases you are susceptible to and what drugs will work for you while you wait.

— A strain of avian flu will jump to humans from birds, causing a global pandemic.

— By comparing the genomes of humans and chimps, scientists will be able to figure out what makes us different from the apes.

The truth is that no one has any idea if such widely predicted developments will come true — in 2006, or in 2016 for that matter. The only reliable prediction in modern scientific research is that the big news is usually completely unexpected.

Dolly the cloned sheep was announced in 1997, after many scientists had decided it was impossible to clone an adult animal. For more than a year, some in the scientific community thought Dolly might be a hoax. But this year, when there really was a cloning hoax — the announcement by Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University that he and his team had created 11 lines of cloned human stem cells — the world of science initially hailed his amazing feat.

History also suggests the folly of predicting even gradual developments. Remember gene therapy? Hailed a quarter-century ago as the salvation of medicine, it has achieved no real success. "Gene therapy still isn't a therapy last time I checked," said Mildred Cho, an ethicist at Stanford University.

Some suspect the same long demise will be the fate of stem cell therapy, and cringe when they see patients demanding stem cell research as their last best hope.

"Medicine in the next 20 years is not going to be racks of spare body parts that you just pop in," said Denise Faustman, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

High hopes and grand predictions are part of science. And so is the gradual tempering of those hopes and predictions over time.

Then again, science is also full of enormous surprises. So the one prediction sure to come true in 2006 is that the unexpected will happen. — Gina Kolata

MOVIES — A SCREEN FIRST: SCORSESE AND JAAACK

Movie fans are so busy picking among the Oscar-ready riches on display for the holidays that they probably haven't noticed that 2006 is shaping up as a banner year for film intrigue, much of it on the set.