problems with section spacing and getting unstarred sections into toc

[Bok Young Hoon]

Hi everyone:
I am just trying to finish putting the chapters of my thesis together and
seem to be running into some problems:

1. the spacing between sections seem to be inconsistent (there would be
large (vertical) spaces between some sections (or in this case subsections)
and very small spaces between others) - is there anything I can do about
this?

2. does anyone know how I can get unstarred sections to appear in the table
of contents?

Thanks in advance for all your help with this.