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What makes a winning college admissions essay? Poynter Institute faculty member Kelly McBride knows.

She coaches students at Poynter and has talked to admissions officers and studied up on the topic.

The stakes are high, she says. A great essay can pave the way for admission, even if a student's grades and SAT score aren't the best.

As back pain has become an increasingly common ailment in the United States -- and for chronic sufferers, one of the most debilitating -- desperate patients and their doctors have propelled major advancements in the field.

SALT LAKE CITY - Today, thousands of children, pregnant women and chronically sick adults, who have been granted priority by federal health officials, will receive H1N1 swine flu vaccine through government-sponsored mass vaccination clinics across the country.

Should the obese be able to join them?

Zander Blosser sat at the plastic picnic table outside his parents' house and began to build a dragon out of duct tape and printer paper.

He had a black knit cap on his head and chipped black polish on his nails. The air smelled like kitty litter and lawn-mower gas, depending on the wind, and he worked under the raspy din of a window-unit air conditioner.

Bystander CPR.

Whether you or your neighbor is ready and willing to do it may quadruple the odds of survival for someone down on the street in cardiac arrest.

Macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss among older Americans, can be regulated by diet, according to Tufts University research published in the journal Ophthalmology.

Take our quiz about foods that can raise or lower the incidence of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD.

Expert skiers seeking something new this season in New England might check out New Hampshire's reopened Mittersill ski area, next to Cannon Mountain.

Closed since 1984, Mittersill's 86 acres will be operated by Cannon Mountain, which also will provide shuttle service to it on weekends and holidays.

Health-reform legislation approved by the House last weekend would add tens of millions of Americans to the ranks of the insured.

And it would begin to address some of the deficiencies in the way family doctors are paid and trained so that there may be at least a few more primary-care physicians available to care for all those newly insured patients.

It's the kind of publicity snowsports resorts savor -- free, around-the-clock videotape of snow descending on their slopes, lifts, parking lots and roads.

Q: What do you think of that guy who was denied boarding on his flight because he was wearing a tracksuit and had a seat in first class? What should you wear in first class?