In Africa, waiting for blood work can take weeks, and many people don't bother getting their results. A new device could make testing in remote villages a possibility, and that could lead to drastically improved treatment.

Smoking is still bad for you, but tobacco may have finally been redeemed.

It's a tough week for cigarette companies looking to recruit the next generation of smokers. Cigarette companies can no longer lure the young with claims of "light," "mild," "medium," or "low." And candy-flavored cigarettes have officially been banned as part of the larger Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act.

Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, as they're commonly called, have been giving the FDA the shakes for almost a year now.

Tobacco: It's good for more than just giving you lung cancer. Scientists at UC Berkeley recently figured out a way to get tobacco plants to grow extractable synthetic photovoltaic and photochemical cells that can theoretically be sprayed onto a glass substrate to create solar panels.

Four years ago, the startup Nabi Biopharmaceuticals began testing a promising nicotine vaccine called NicVax with the aid of $4.1 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health. Earlier today, the vaccine received a booster shot: Nabi signed a $540 million licensing deal with pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline and is starting Phase III clinical trials.