By SALLY KALSON, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Another year, another new calendar full of blank pages waiting to be filled with plans and intentions.

If you want to try some new things or make improvements in 2012, try spreading your efforts throughout the year to make them more doable. Here are some monthly suggestions.

JANUARY

The romantic hills of Croatia, a perfect beach in Thailand, the gargantuan fjords of Iceland, the modern renaissance of Oman and ... the three rivers of Pittsburgh?

Yes, Pittsburgh is now considered one of the world's top 20 places to visit in 2012, according to the newest edition of National Geographic Traveler magazine, arguably the kahuna of travel publications.

A new study has found that children raised in poverty were less likely to develop certain chronic diseases in adulthood if they had loving, attentive mothers from a young age.

A new nationwide clinical trial on the use of brain stents in stroke patients showed the opposite of what researchers were expecting: Patients who received the stents following a stroke did significantly worse after 30 days than their counterparts who received medical therapies alone.

At age 3, Scott Wasserman Stern became fascinated by origami. A preschool teacher introduced the class to the Japanese art of paper-folding, and the little boy couldn't get enough.

Telling physicians they shouldn't accept gifts from drug companies is all well and good. But convincing them that doing so is wrong is another matter.

A new study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that physicians rationalize such gifts as payback for all the sacrifices they made to get their education -- although they may not realize they're doing it.

The agency in charge of protecting the nation's blood supply has been following a double standard since 1985.

The rule has been that a man who had sex with another man even once since 1977 is banned permanently from donating blood. Yet there's only a one-year deferral for a man who has had sex with an HIV-positive woman.

As outrage mounts over the Tennessee woman who put her adopted 7-year-old boy from Russia onto an airplane by himself and shipped him back to his native land, U.S. adoption advocates are saying that the case is an anomaly and not the result of a systemic flaw.

This week's emergency airlift of dozens of children to the United States from earthquake-ravaged Haiti has highlighted some touchy issues on the adoption of children from that impoverished nation.

They may be kept with the best of intentions, but exotic pets can create havoc at home and in nature.

Sometimes they turn on their owners, as happened to Kelly Ann Walz, 37, of Saylorsburg, Pa., who was mauled to death Oct. 4 by a 350-pound black bear while cleaning its cage.