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Women may be more vulnerable than men to the cancer-causing effects of smoking tobacco, according to new results reported this week at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), Lugano, Switzerland.

Swiss researchers studied 683 lung cancer patients who were referred to a cancer centre in St Gallen between 2000 and 2005 and found women tended to be younger when they developed the cancer, despite having smoked on average significantly less than men.

Cancer vaccines and targeted therapies are beginning to offer new treatment options following surgery for patients with early stages of lung cancer, experts said at the first European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO) in Lugano, Switzerland (1-3 May 2009).

CHICAGO – Obesity and arthritis that take root during early and middle age significantly contribute to women's decreased quality of life during their senior years, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

In a study that included 5,888 people over 65, women suffered up to two and a half times more disabilities than men of the same age.

Higher rates of obesity and arthritis among these women explained up to 48 percent of the gender gap in disability – above all other common chronic health conditions.

New data from several studies evaluating new techniques for early diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer are being presented at the first European Multidisciplinary Conference on Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO) in Lugano, Switzerland (1-3 May 2009).

"Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide and also in Europe. One of the reasons for this is that symptoms of lung cancer are very often lacking or occur only late in the course of the disease," said Prof Rudolf M. Huber from the University of Munich in Germany.

A new approach being developed to treat individuals with cancer that is resistant to standard therapy is the use of adenovirus-based therapies. Although promising clinical results have been obtained in some settings, in many cases the therapies have had little impact. One reason for this lack of efficacy has now been uncovered by a team of researchers, led by Nick Lemoine and Yahoe Wang, at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, London.

MicroRNAs are single-stranded snippets that, not long ago, were given short shrift as genetic junk. Now that studies have shown they regulate genes involved in normal functioning as well as diseases such as cancer, everyone wants to know: What regulates microRNAs?

Scientists at Johns Hopkins were surprised to find an elegantly simple answer: touch. In a new study, published online April 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers discovered that cell-to-cell contact revs up the manufacture of these small but mighty molecules.

DOHA, QATAR (May 1, 2009) -- Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) have mapped a draft version of the date palm genome, unlocking many of its genetic secrets.

AMES, Iowa -- When cells decide to make proteins, key building blocks of all organisms, they need to know where to start reading the instructions for assembling them.

An Iowa State University researcher has figured out a mechanism involved in marking where these instructions are located in a cell's DNA.

DAVIS, Calif. May 1, 2009—U.S. Forest Service scientists have completed a study on a beetle that was first detected in California in 2004, but has now attacked 67 percent of the oak trees in an area 30 miles east of San Diego.

Their report appears in the current issue of The Pan-Pacific Entomologist and focuses on Agrilus coxalis, a wood-boring beetle so rare it does not even have an accepted common name. Scientists have proposed the Entomological Society of America common names committee call it the goldspotted oak borer.

Wildlife imports into the United States are fragmented and insufficiently coordinated, failing to accurately list more than four in five species entering the country.

So reports a team of scientists from the Wildlife Trust, Brown University, Pacific Lutheran University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Global Invasive Species Programme.

A paper on their findings is published in this week's issue of the journal Science.

Zhang and his team have published a paper on this research in the journal Nature Materials entitled: An Optical Cloak Made of Dielectrics. Co-authoring the paper with Zhang were Jason Valentine, Jensen Li, Thomas Zentgraf and Guy Bartal, all members of Zhang's research group.

Despite the common perception that total hip replacements last about 10 years, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found that the devices are extremely durable, even 20 years after surgery.

HOUSTON—(May 1, 2009) – For the first time, scientists have discovered a single gene defect that causes thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections as well as early onset coronary artery disease, ischemic stroke and Moyamoya disease. The research is led by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

College students' views about evolution and creationism are often shaped by what they learned in their high school biology classes, according to a University of Minnesota study published in the May issue of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – It is not uncommon for prison inmates to experience religious conversions. Now a new University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) study, out in the April issue of the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, suggests that inmates who have positive social support networks are more likely to maintain their religious conversions.