The science has long been clear that smoking causes cancer, but new research shows that children could inherit genetic damage from a father who smokes.

The wild tiger now occupies a mere 7 percent of its historic range, and the area known to be inhabited by tigers has declined by 41 percent over the past decade, according to an article published in the June 2007 issue of BioScience. Growing trade in folk medicines made from tiger parts and tiger skins, along with habitat loss and fragmentation, is believed to be the chief reason for the losses. The assessment, by Eric Dinerstein of the World Wildlife Fund and 15 coauthors, describes the wild tiger's population trajectory as "catastrophic" and urges international cooperation to ensure the animal's continued existence in the wild.

A team of biomedical engineers has developed a computer model that makes use of more or less predictable “guesstimates” of human muscle movements to explain how the brain draws on both what it recently learned and what it’s known for some time to anticipate what it needs to develop new motor skills.

In the June issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), researchers report their findings from the first-ever study examining the prognostic value of serum HBV DNA levels for patients with liver cancer undergoing chemotherapy. They found that patients with high pre-chemotherapy levels of HBV DNA had a significantly increased incidence of severe hepatitis which was associated with the worst survival. The article is also available online at Wiley Interscience (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/hepatology).

The huge potential of agricultural soils to reduce greenhouse gases and increase production at the same time has been reinforced by new research findings at NSW Department of Primary Industries' (DPI) Wollongbar Agricultural Institute.