By SARAH AVERY, Raleigh News and Observer

A toddler's inability to exert self-control appears to predict trouble later in life with substance abuse, crime and money mismanagement, researchers report.

The findings suggest early interventions to improve self-control could have lasting, cost-effective results, according to the report last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A targeted therapy that has generated excitement for its early success in breast cancer is now being tested on other cancers, including often-deadly ovarian tumors.

Doctors and patients have eagerly anticipated the drugs, which provide an entirely new route to killing tumors that is less toxic than traditional chemotherapies.

Despite a high likelihood of death, black patients are much less inclined to have surgery for early stage lung cancer than whites, often because of a communication gulf between them and their doctors, scientists reported Wednesday.

A bacterial infection typically spread by fleas, lice and biting flies could be more prevalent than many think, and may have been transmitted from a mother to her children at birth, scientists from North Carolina State University say.

The symptoms are unmistakable: Wandering thoughts. Uncontrollable urge to be outside. Odd sense of well-being and, daresay, friskiness.

As infectious as it seems, spring fever isn't anything you can actually catch, but it may have some basis in biology.

Bob Warzel had what he thought was a successful kidney transplant a year ago at University of North Carolina Hospitals. Two weeks later, he learned that the gift contained a hidden surprise -- cancer.

Some men may be hardwired to favor money over the sight of a pretty face, Duke University neuroscientists have demonstrated.

When asked to pay to view photographs of attractive women, men mentally weigh the experience against cost -- and some spend more for ogling rights than others.

Covered in deep, gaping burns from a gas station that exploded during Haiti's earthquake, Eric Louis spent nearly two weeks in the devastated countryside with nothing more than petroleum jelly and water to salve his wounds.

He had no pain medicine for injuries widely considered the most excruciating of all traumas. His singed skin began melting away. Movement became agonizing.

Zinc in denture adhesives has been blamed in dozens of cases of nerve damage, including that of a North Carolina man who says 20 years of using the glues caused him to become disabled.

Genetic difference in the way some African-Americans process glucose may explain why they are disproportionately susceptible to diabetes and heart disease, scientists reported Wednesday.