Every month the Diagnosis column of The New York Times Magazine asks Well readers to take on a difficult case and offer their own solution to the diagnostic riddle. This week, you’ll find a summary of a case that really does involve a zebra — and a circus trainer with a headache so severe that it sent him to the emergency room. We will provide notes and images ordered by the doctors who originally were faced with this medical mystery and lay the dilemma at your feet.

The Challenge: Can you solve the case of an animal trainer who develops an excruciating headache after a run-in with a zebra?...

On March 7, 1990, I was in Multan, Pakistan, in southern Punjab province. I can’t remember why; it had something to do with my duties as the Washington Post’s South Asia correspondent. In those primitive days before cell phones and the Internet, the home newsroom, mercifully, had great difficulty reaching a correspondent in the field, so we were often free to report as we chose, but we also had to monitor breaking news. My habit was to tune in by shortwave radio to the BBC for hourly world-news bulletins, supplemented by the occasional “Newshour” of in-depth, worldwide radio reporting. (It’s still a great program, and now easily accessed on an iPhone.)...

The female veterans who filed the lawsuit say combat exclusion is unfair and outdated, based on stereotypes, inhibits recognition and promotion of servicewomen -- and ignores the realities of the modern battlefield.

Women have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq for the past decade, serving in a slew of military roles on a murky battlefield that knows no formal frontlines. Now, four veterans who have served tours in both countries—including those who have won Purple Hearts for their efforts—are suing for recognition of that reality, and the end to the rules that officially bar them from combat...

Lori Nix thinks she may be "a little obsessed" with the apocalypse. It began as a child, when she would watch with awe as blockbuster disaster flicks "magnified" the natural disasters and dangers she saw around her growing up in the Midwest. In her latest series, “The City,” the photojournalist turned fine-art photographer imagines a human-less world where Mother Nature has reclaimed our cities; and she makes these breathtaking images all without the help of Photoshop.

Citing her strong ability to "build and construct [her] world rather than seek out an existing world," Nix would rather not utilize digital manipulation to create her post-apocalyptic futures, choosing instead to build tiny, painstakingly detailed dioramas. Ranging in size from 18"x12"x33" (see Beauty Shop) to 92"x42"x100" (see Mall), each diorama takes up to seven months to build with the help of her partner...

What was life like in America in the 17th century? According to a new masterpiece of history by Harvard's Bernard Bailyn, it was nasty, brutish, and short. R.B. Bernstein considers what Bailyn's work reveals about how unlikely the European settlement of America really was...

Researchers who've studied Einstein's brain have long known that parts of his parietal lobe—a part of the brain involved in spatial imagination—were unusually large. But now, a collection of 14 photographs missing since 1955 have revealed that Einstein's right frontal lobe has four ridges instead of the standard-issue three, giving him more brain power. And, in an unusual twist, it turns out that the host of NOVA scienceNOW, David Pogue, shares this same trait...

Mexico's president is making one last attempt to get the "United States" out of Mexico -- at least as far as the country's name is concerned.

The name "United Mexican States," or "Estados Unidos Mexicanos," was adopted in 1824 after independence from Spain in imitation of Mexico's democratic northern neighbor, but it is rarely used except on official documents, money and other government material.

Still, President Felipe Calderon called a news conference Thursday that he wants to make the name simply "Mexico."...

At first, the visage appears androgynous in its skyward gaze, but then you notice the rest of the figure stretching a quarter of a mile to your right — the breasts, the hips, a delicate hand open and pointing, outlined by slivers of pond water.

Meet the supine earth goddess named, variously, Northumberlandia, the Lady of the North or, to the locals in this coal-mining area, the Lady.

Officially opened by a woman — Princess Anne — in September, it has become an apparent hit, with 25,000 visitors in its first few weeks...