Cigarette smoking and concurrent infection with high levels of the virus associated with cervical cancer can increase cancer risk by as much as 27 times, according to a study published in the November 2006 issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

While there have been significant advances in the use of gene expression profiling to assess a cancer prognosis, a Mayo Clinic review and analysis of existing lung cancer studies shows that this technology has not yet surpassed the accuracy of conventional methods used to assess survival in lung cancer patients.

The dynamics of evolution are fully in play within the environment of a tumor, just as they are in forests and meadows, oceans and streams. This is the view of researchers in an emerging cross-disciplinary field that brings the thinking of ecologists and evolutionary biologists to bear on cancer biology.

A dioxin toxin contained in the herbicide Agent Orange affects male reproductive health by limiting the growth of the prostate gland and lowering testosterone levels, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in a cohort study of more than 2,000 Air Force veterans who served during the Vietnam War.

Monarch butterflies rely on fall-blooming flowers during their long migration. Credit: Photo by Jerry A. Payne, USDA Agricultural Research Service, from Forestry Images US Forest Service (FS) research in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas suggests that decades of fire suppression have reduced the area's food supply for migrating monarch butterflies—and that restoration efforts that include prescribed burning can reverse this trend. Craig Rudolph and Ron Thill, research ecologists with the FS Southern Research Station (SRS), along with SRS ecologists Charles Ely, Richard Schaefer and J. Howard Williamson, report their findings in the latest issue of the Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society.

Researchers have found that a class of RNA molecules, previously thought to have no function, may in fact protect sex cells from self-destructing. These findings will be published in the November 17 issue of the journal Cell.

UCLA researchers in collaboration with researchers at Rutgers University have solved longstanding mysteries surrounding DNA transcription, the first step in carrying out instructions contained in our genes. The breakthrough described in an article in the Nov. 17 issue of the journal Science reveals important structural information about the gyrations of DNA during transcription and the effects of those gyrations on the process.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a new protein associated with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Several lines of evidence point to a protein called Tribbles, named after the furry creatures that took over the starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek series. Tribbles was first described in fruit flies.

The country's leading African-American lawmakers, civil rights leaders and medical experts today called on the federal government to adopt and implement a new blueprint to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in the African-American community. The plan is outlined in a new report, African-Americans, Health Disparities and HIV/AIDS: Recommendations for Confronting the Epidemic in Black America, written by Robert E. Fullilove, EdD, associate dean for Community and Minority Affairs and professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The report was released by the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) in advance of World AIDS Day (December 1).

New research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine suggests that certain inhaled asthma medications – as well as similar chemicals our bodies produce during times of high stress – may worsen diseases such as asthma, heart failure and lupus that involve inflammation.