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Residents of Washington, D.C., and 15 states -- from Georgia to Michigan to New York -- are awaiting a massive, boisterous grand entrance. A group of cicadas that only emerges once every 17 years is making its way out of the ground -- by the billions, at least. NPR's Melissa Block headed out to suburban Maryland for a cicada preview.

Prior to the 1970s, children with disabilities seeking education could not attend public schools and were either sent to private schools or state institutions and lived there under horrible conditions. Lawyers went to court using the Supreme Court's Brown v. the Board of Education decision, and argued that disabled children deserved the same equal education that black children won years earlier. NPR's Joseph Shapiro reports.

For this month's issue of Texas Monthly, writers Jeff McCord and John Morthland took on an ambitious assignment: coming up with a list of the 100 best Texas songs. The task required the two to make agonizing decisions, between "On the Road Again," "Always on My Mind," "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" — and that's just music from Willie Nelson. McCord and Morthland discuss their choices with NPR's Melissa Block.

best known as the screenwriter for 1985's My Beautiful Laundrette and 1987's Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. He's written a script for a new film -- The Mother -- and has a new novel out called The Body. Both mark a departure from his socio-political stories about being a person of color in England. Now the subject of aging takes center stage. Frank Browning reports.

In the latest in a series on the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports from San Francisco. The city's complex racial and ethnic mix makes integrating its schools increasingly difficult. Now many members of one minority group, Chinese Americans, are actively opposing integration efforts, saying they're just another form of discrimination. NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports.

Half a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against segregation in schools. Yet patterns of housing and immigration have created in many areas schools that are extremely segregated. NPR's Claudio Sanchez and NPR's Ina Jaffe report from California, where in some places, the level of segregation is as intense as any in 1954.

As part of our series on the legacy of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, NPR's Ina Jaffe explores an integrated school in Los Angeles. The ruling's desegregation mandate is challenged today in districts like Los Angeles, where 90 percent of public school students are minorities. But in places like the Sherman Oaks magnet school, it's possible to find blacks and whites, Latinos and Asians sitting side-by-side getting a high quality education.

NPR's Claudio Sanchez examines the little-known school desegregation case of Mendez v. Westminster. This California case won access for Mexican Americans to white schools in 1947 and helped set the stage seven years later for Brown v. Board of Education.

New research indicates that women with breast cancer survive longer if they are able to eliminate certain stress factors in their lives. The study suggests that in about 30 percent of breast-cancer survivors, the body's own immune system chemicals -- notably cytokines -- prolong fatigue. Frank Browning reports.

Frank Browning reports on research that may dispute the centuries-old theory that the source of depression is in the brain. The new findings suggest that physical health may play a bigger role in determining one's psychological well-being.