Most of us jump in to a conclusion that when a person has learning disabilities, he or she will have a particularly difficult time getting admitted to any college. David Montesano, however, insists that we are all clouded by the wrong assumption.

Montesano, a college admission strategist, said that based on years of experience in College Match Educational Consultants students who have learning disabilities actually have high chances of admission in colleges.

Montesano said that colleges want diversity; and a learning disability is some sort of diversity. Also, colleges are often lenient with an applicant’s test scores and grades if presented with an evidence of learning disabilities. Learning disabilities will push colleges to be more considerate of class rankings, low grades, and standardized test scores.

As an example, Montesano said that students with learning disabilities who get a GPA of 3.4 can compete with normal students with a GPA of 3.7; the same way that colleges are more impressed with applicants who have learning disabilities with a GPA of 3.4 than a normal applicant with the same grades.

Instead of hiding learning disabilities in college applications, Montesano said it should be highlighted. Aside from proving that you indeed have learning disabilities by showing medical records and reports, you should also point out that impact of your disabilities to your grades.

Before you do that, however, Montesano said that it is best to verify if your college of choice is open to diversity. You cannot directly ask a college about this as they will definitely deny that they judge students based on such medical conditions; instead, ask around campus or look it up online.

Based on a study conducted by Swedish researchers, women who drink enough amounts of coffee everyday have lower risks of developing aggressive breast cancer.

Their study successfully linked drinking at least five cups of coffee a day to a significantly lowered reduction in ER-negative breast cancer or more commonly known as t he non-hormone responsive disease. However, they found no links between coffee consumption and ER-positive breast cancer.

Dr. Per Hal, co-author in the said study, said that daily intake of coffee may protect women against the aggressive form of breast cancer – ER-negative. Hal, however, admits that they do not have thorough details about this finding yet. For example, they do not know if there are specific coffee mixes that can affect women’s risk to breast cancer. What they do know though, is that the protective effect of coffee in general is striking.

The study was reported online in the Breast Cancer Research website on May 11. It involved 5,929 Swedish women between 50 to 74 years old. Roughly half of that population have breast cancer.

Questionnaires were handed out to the participants which include questions like smoking, eating, and drinking pattern. Based on those questionnaires alone, the researchers noticed that women who drink a minimum of five cups of coffee per day have at least 33 percent lesser chance of having ER-negative breast cancer.

Hal, however, pointed out that consumers should not jump in to conclusion just yet. Although they saw an association between coffee and breast cancer, they have not yet proven that the two have a cause-and-effect relationship.

Their next step is to single out what specific chemical in the coffee that cause such dramatic decrease in ER-negative breast cancer risk.

A mother from Massachusetts who withheld chemotherapeutic drugs was convicted Tuesday. Those were supposed to be given at home from her autistic son who also has non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She was convicted of attempted murder after jurors dismissed Kristen LaBrie’s claim that she thought side effects of those drugs could kill her son.

LaBrie was decided guilty of child endangerment, as well as battery and assault for not giving her son, Jeremy Fraser, 5 months worth of cancer medications. The boy was diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and died three years later at the age of 9.

LaBrie said that she deliberately stopped her son’s cancer treatment because she was seeing his son get really sick from the medicine’s side effects. Prosecutors see this as her way of running away from her responsibilities as a single mother to Jeremy.

One of the jurors Paul Holladay said that it was easy for them to reach a decision on the minor charges but had a really difficult time discussing LaBrie’s attempted murder case. He further said that when the trial started, they did not think they’d find her guilty and neither did they want it to end up that way.

However, Holladay also said that as more pieces of evidence were reviewed, the more they were pushed to the conclusion that the single mother is guilty. LaBrie was aware of the implications and importance of the treatment for her son but continued to deprive him of it.

LaBrie became teary-eyed while the verdict was read but consoled her sister who was then sobbing in the front row. When she was led away, she mouthed “I love you” to her family.