Gene variants have been located that are more often seen in lung cancer patients than others. Could it be genetics? Researchers in China and the United States have found evidence that some people could be more susceptible to lung cancer than others based on their genes.

Walking sticks seem stripped of all their connotations of lame legs in “Vertical Art: The Enduring Beauty of Antique Canes and Walking Sticks” (Hudson Hills Press, $350). This 400-page slipcased photo essay by the Italian photographer Umberto Barone shows 377 canes that all belong to one California collector who remains anonymous in the book; the captions are by Roberta Maneker.

The canes, mostly made in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, range from folk art wooden poles carved with animal faces to Fabergé snakewood shafts topped in spheres of semiprecious stones inlaid with diamonds. Mr. Barone’s photos only show the knobs, enlarged to saucer size and arranged in eerie tableaus amid smoke tendrils, water sprays, sand dunes and rose petals.

“Most books about canes out there have been meat-and-potatoes histories of canes through the ages,” said Ronald Varney, a fine-art agent who orchestrated the book’s publication for the collector. “This is meant to raise the profile of these fantastic, extraordinary objects, and not just be useful for the small niche of cane collectors.”

The owner will match proceeds from sales of this extravagant volume with a donation to a charity in San Francisco, the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation.

The website for the book is http://www.verticalartcanebook.com/

Mike Miron already had quit smoking and didn’t have any symptoms when a scan revealed something suspicious in his lungs.A biopsy confirmed it was cancer, but the tumor was tiny, caught early though a lung screening program at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore.

“That program saved my life,” Miron said of the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program.

“I would be dead right now. I literally would be in a casket.”

Instead Miron, 63, is hard at work as the head of the Annapolis Office of Economic Development. Miron had 12 percent of his right lung removed and a few months of chemotherapy treatments.

Now, he wants to spread the word about the early screening program, and was surprised that many nurses he interacted with while having surgery had never heard of it.

“There needs to be more education at the grassroots level,” he said.

Olyphant resident Timmy Walsh, 6, recently had a public viewing of his ‘Photos For A Cure’ at Artistic Impressions. The event raised more than $800 for the Lung Cancer Research Foundation. Rita Thompson, owner of Artistic Impressions, donated materials and frames for the photos, and Daniel Brown, owner of Parasene Web Developing, donated www.cameraforacure.com for Walsh’s photo sales.

“We’ve finally gotten to the point where we can tell people about how their DNA impacts their health,” including predilections for cancer, heart disease and diabetes, said Elissa Levin, director of genetic counseling at Navigenics in Redwood City, which, along with Mountain View-based 23andMe, is at the vanguard of helping people better understand their genetic markers. “As a professional, that’s an exciting turning point.”

Family displays deceased woman’s collection to help deal with her loss

 Santa Claus figurines covering a card table in Lula Hurxthal’s living room represent much more than the jolly spirit of the holidays.

Hurxthal, 88, of Galesburg, is displaying her late daughter Beverly Wade’s St. Nick collection as a way to help the family deal with their first Christmas without her.

“We miss her,” Hurxthal said, pointing out one of her favorite pieces in her daughter’s collection – a regal portrait of Santa, painted by Wade on a wooden sled.

Wade died in August at age 68, after battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer for 10 years.

A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and Harvard claims that trucking industry workers who have been regularly exposed to diesel vehicle exhaust have an elevated risk of lung cancer with each increasing year of work.

Although early detection of lung cancer has mostly eluded modern medicine, computed tomography and other diagnostic tools may eventually lead to better outcomes.

The vast majority of lung cancers are diagnosed at an advanced stage, making this malignancy the most prevalent cause of cancer death worldwide. Only about 15 percent of patients in the United States survive five years or longer.

Trucking jobs, like those that will be created as Jacksonville’s port expands, appear to carry added risks of lung cancer, a new nationwide study suggests.

That risk grows incrementally each year that workers remain in jobs as drivers, loading-dock workers and other roles that involve regular exposure to diesel fumes and other pollutants, reported researchers who studied work histories of more than 31,000 Teamsters.

People may face an increased risk of lung cancer if they have a gene variant that metabolizes the most potent of , a new study says.

The ABCB1 and ABCC1 genes normally help protect the lungs by removing inhaled toxins. Specifically, they act on tobacco-specific nitrosamine 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) — a cigarette smoke component shown to cause lung cancer in rodents.