Scientists at a Chinese university said Monday they can use rice to make albumin, a protein found in human blood that is often used for treating burns, traumatic shock and liver disease.

When extracted from rice seeds, the protein is "physically and chemically equivalent to blood-derived human serum albumin (HSA)," said the research in the U.S.-published Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A new study suggests that when parents are deployed in the military, their children are more than twice as likely to carry a weapon, join a gang or be involved in fights.

And that includes the daughters.

Commonwealth government leaders meeting in Australia agreed Saturday to step up efforts to eradicate polio worldwide, despite the Afghanistan war setting back vaccination efforts there and in neighboring Pakistan.

Leaders of Britain, Canada, Australia and Nigeria, as well as billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, committed tens of millions of dollars in additional funding toward the World Health Organization's campaign to wipe out the disabling disease from the four countries where it remains endemic — India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Snakes get a bad rap for being slimy, cold-hearted creatures, but U.S. researchers said Thursday some actually have huge hearts that could offer clues to treating people with cardiac disease.

The secret to the giant Burmese python's success is in a massive amount of fatty acids that circulate in the snake's blood after eating a meal, which could be as big as a deer, according to the study in the journal Science.

Long-term, daily doses of aspirin led to a fall of some 60 percent in cases of colorectal cancer among people with an inherited risk of this disease, the journal The Lancet reported on Friday.

The trial -- considered to be broad in sample and long in duration -- confirms evidence elsewhere that aspirin has a protective effect against cancer of the colon and rectum, it said.

People who received chest X-rays to screen for lung cancer showed no better survival rate after four years than those who were not screened at all, said a U.S. study released Wednesday.

The research, published in the November 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), follows a separate study last year that showed X-rays fell short compared to modern CT scans in saving lives from lung cancer, the leading cancer killer worldwide.

An independent review into breast cancer screening has been launched amid concerns that the diagnostic process could be more harmful than beneficial.

Last month researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark claimed women given mammograms were being "misinformed" and not told about the risk of over diagnosis.

Boys should get routinely vaccinated against human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cancer, a U.S. government advisory panel recommended on Tuesday.

All boys aged 11-12 should get the HPV vaccine, which is already approved for use in girls, said the recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

More evidence that coffee, particularly among female drinkers, has a positive effect against the most common form of skin cancer worldwide was released Monday at a major US medical conference.

Women who drank more than three cups per day of caffeinated coffee saw a 20 percent lower risk of getting basal cell carcinoma(BCC), a slow-growing form of cancer, than those who drank less than a cup per month.

Researchers in the United States said on Tuesday they had found a "shocking" association -- if only a statistical one -- between violence by teenagers and the amount of soda they drank.

High-school students in inner-city Boston who consumed more than five cans of non-diet, fizzy soft drinks every week were between nine and 15-percent likelier to engage in an aggressive act compared with counterparts who drank less.