We have known each other for a long time and I have admired your work enormously. That is why I, along with so many others, was stunned when your Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation pulled the plug on Planned Parenthood last week.

The growing private sector fills a niche in a market long dominated by public universities. The private schools offer millions of students a no-frills education and a better shot at a paycheck after graduation as China continues its quest to gain influence in the world economy.

Excelsior is a nonprofit college in Albany that specializes in helping mid-career adults finish their studies. The school consolidates college credits in the same way a debt-relief service consolidates bills, helping returning students clean up their transcripts and finish their degrees.

Tuesday morning at 11:15, denizens of Catholic in Northeast Washington put down what they were doing, scuttled under desks and held on tight. It was a test of earthquake etiquette that nearly everyone in Washington failed last August, when the city was visited by an actual earthquake.

As it turns out, this is a Hollywood exaggeration. (We’re shocked.) In real life, exposure to a vacuum would be a painful fate but much less gooey. In a recent video post, Discover magazine blogger Phil Plait explains what would really happen. First, the good news: Your blood won’t boil. On Earth, liquids boil at a lower temperature when there’s less atmospheric pressure; outer space is a vacuum, with no pressure at all; hence the blood boiling idea. But your blood is locked up in a closed circulatory system, so it’s protected from the elements (or lack thereof). Your body’s open circuits are a different matter. “You will erupt out all of the air in your lungs, it will come out of your mouth. All of the air in your intestines will find a different escape route,” Plait says.

The rules affect farmers planting seeds modified to produce a toxin derived from Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, a natural insecticide. The Environmental Protection Agency requires those growers to also plant an adjacent area — a so-called refuge — of non-Bt corn so that bugs feed on both types of corn and don’t become immune to the toxin.

I’d just learned what it was going to cost to finish the work on a dental implant I had begun six months earlier, in May 2010. Back then, my periodontist had surgically placed a screwlike titanium post within the bone socket below my missing tooth. I had paid $1,750 out of pocket to have the device implanted, since my insurance wouldn’t cover it. I’d assumed that this was going to be the most expensive part of the procedure.

That’s the introduction to a list of seven myths about learning on the website of the Independent Curriculum Group, which is part of a movement of leading private college preparatory schools with teacher-generated curriculum.

Obama’s budget proposal Monday for the next fiscal year seeks level funding or slight increases for several education programs, including competitive grants that reward public education reforms and innovation. And he wants to spend $14 billion on one-time “strategic investment” in key areas, including synchronizing education with labor needs, improving teacher quality and making college more affordable.

The Andrew W. Mellon auditorium was transformed Monday into a space-age conference center, with Microsoft Kinect-powered interactive tables and wall displays featuring the latest developments in GE’s product base — everything from turbines to appliances and health care equipment.

These days, it’s not a protest until someone dons a Guy Fawkes mask.

It’s an enviable list, really.

They’re among the many who’ve joined Sellers at the Most Powerful Women summit. This year, from a slightly raised stage, she looks out once more across table upon table of some of the world’s most prominent female executives, artists and philanthropists. It’s the opening dinner of Fortune magazine’s annual summit on a surprisingly chilly October evening on the Southern California coastline. The 400-plus guests sit under a big, white tent on a cliff perched over the gray, choppy Pacific. Inside, the Ritz-Carlton has pulled off something that looks a lot like prom: purple sequined tablecloths and settings of pink roses illuminated by purple and pink floodlights.

It is Cyber Friday and — ho-ho-ho — Santa is making his rounds.

You may know all about Cyber Monday, which comes right after Thanksgiving weekend, when online hawkers try to sell a lot of stuff by offering free shipping. Cyber Friday comes four days later. That’s when a billion and one packages begin getting delivered.

For the 35th year, the United States is mounting its annual campaign to gather space rocks from the wind-hammered icefields of Antarctica.