Pat Wingert

Just a few years ago, heart disease was considered a man's problem. Women -- especially if they were under 50 -- didn't worry too much about the cholesterol clogging their arteries or the possibility that pain in their chest might signal serious trouble.

Maybe you grew up calling it Aunt Flo. Perhaps you referred to it as "my friend." But despite references that imply familiarity, most of us don't really know that much about our monthly menstrual periods. After having "the talk" with your mother, you probably learned little beyond what your own experiences told you.

Gynecologists still shudder when they remember July 9, 2002. That morning, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) halted a major clinical trial of estrogen and progestin therapy after preliminary results showed that women in the study who were taking the combined hormone regimen had an increased risk of breast cancer, heart attacks, stroke and blood clots.

Whatever else went wrong in the world this year, no one can complain about a shortage of celebrity breakups. From Jennifer Aniston's split with Brad Pitt in January to Jessica Simpson's divorce from Nick Lachey in December, 2005 was awash in ruined romance.

Scrapbooks. Photo albums. Memory boxes. Those are just a few ways we try to preserve memories. But what are you doing to preserve your most precious memories--the ones inside your head?

Doctors write millions of prescriptions annually for the class of medications called SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). These drugs--Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, Lexapro, Zoloft and Luvox--are among the best weapons available to fight depression.

Eugenia Hull wants to "put books into the hands of kids who need books." Among the neediest kids right now are those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. So Hull--the senior director of communications and marketing for Book Relief, an offshoot of the nonprofit national literacy organization First Book--has gotten publishers to commit to donating about 5 million new titles to the hardest-hit areas over the course of the next year.

Soldiers Who Lost Limbs In Iraq And Afghanistan Are Doing The Unthinkable: Going Back Into Battle.

Is affirmative action actually boosting the number of minorities graduating with a degree? Two new studies show that minority graduation rates remain one of higher education's dirty little secrets.

Raising kids with depression is a confusing, often terrifying business for parents. It got more so last week when a Food and Drug Administration panel advised adding "black box" warnings to antidepressants because they cause 2 to 3 percent of kids to become suicidal.

When George Gustav Heye decided to open a museum of American Indian artifacts in Manhattan in the 1930s, it was with the expectation that the native people of North America would soon be extinct.

The June 2003 Supreme Court ruling upholding affirmative action was a landmark decision, but for the most part it just maintained the status quo. After all, only a few campuses--including the University of Michigan--had to overhaul their admissions process to eliminate point systems that gave minority students a boost.Now, though, subtle changes are surfacing--mostly dealing with race-exclusive scholarships, outreach and orientation programs designed to encourage attendance by minority students.

Not so long ago, parents were lucky to get a call a month from their college kids. These days many students instant-message their parents multiple times a day.

Travis Quezon is a modern-day Renaissance man. During his seven years in college, most of them at the University of Hawaii, he has studied chemistry and oceanography, art history and sign language.

For teens, June is a rush of exams, proms and parties. And, according to a recent study from Mississippi State University, it's also the month when they're most likely to lose their virginity.

For most inner-city high schools, getting half their graduates into college would be a big deal. But the D.C. -based Seed School--the nation's first urban, public boarding school--is sending 100 percent of its first graduating class to college.

Cornell and Bucknell universities were on Rebecca Ray's list of college choices. But when she visited picturesque McGill in Montreal, she stopped her search. "I'm from a small town in upstate New York, and McGill was so international," says Ray. "It was just what I was looking for."While Canadian students have long traveled to the United States for their higher education, only recently have large numbers of Americans headed north for their bright college years.

Ten years ago two frustrated but idealistic teachers created an experimental middle school in Houston to help underachieving inner-city students. The first KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academy achieved impressive results with a deceptively simple plan: academic rigor, discipline, accountability.

DIDN'T MAKE THE CHEERLEADING SQUAD? MIGHT AS WELL TAKE YOUR ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPAL TO COURT. BY PAT WINGERT Joe Pizza doesn't want to sound negative.

This is a country of immigrants, yet most of the best-known children's fairy tales hail from medieval Europe. That may change with the help of newly translated books from Asia.

Before the supreme Court ruled on affirmative action last spring, there was talk that if minorities lost their edge in college admissions, then colleges should drop legacy preferences, the edge admissions gives to children of alumni.

Think airfare pricing is tricky? Try figuring out college tuition. As more universities face shrinking state subsidies, many are devising creative solutions, including charging different students different tuitions.

For most kids, heaven's kitchen would serve only pizza, hot dogs and french fries. That's not most parents' idea of paradise, but who doesn't give in to her kids' cravings? "The Mom's Guide to Meal Makeovers," an upcoming book by nutritionists Janice Newell Bissex and Liz Weiss, can help alleviate the guilt.

How do telemarketers obtain private information? --Vince Davis, Kansas City, Mo.If you think having an unpublished number will protect you from telemarketers, think again, says the National Consumers League.

Now that the national Do Not Call registry is caught in legal limbo, is there anything we can do to stop telemarketers? --Julie Marshall, Hoboken, N.J.Contact your local attorney general--more than half the states now have their own registries.

After numerous surgeries and months of physical therapy, Pfc. Jessica Lynch is expected to make her long-awaited trip home from Walter Reed Army Medical Center to Wirt County, W.Va., on Tuesday.

Charter schools--the popular public-school hybrids that promise better academic results in exchange for less bureaucratic red tape--provide black students with a more "intensely segregated school" experience than other public schools, according to a new report from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

While former POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch continues to mend at Washington, D.C.'s Walter Reed Army Medical Center, her neighbors in Wirt County, W. Va., are busy preparing to welcome her home.

Adalberto Garza's 13-year- old son, Adalberto Jr., was tagged a problem learner in his Houston elementary school. He's dyslexic and, because his first language is Spanish, English-speaking teachers often had difficulty understanding him. "His accent and his way of talking made him seem as if he had a mental handicap," his father says.

With a crack house around the corner, and dealers and prostitutes being shooed away from the grounds, Monarch Academy in the Sobrante Park section of Oakland, Calif., seems an improbable site for innovation in education.