I just received my University of Florida alumni magazine and right smack in the middle of the publication is a story about cancer. The gist of the article is that there's an explosion of effort and activity in cancer research at this institution -- much like all over the nation -- and featured are all sorts of new cancer techniques and strategies and treatments. But one thing in particular stood out to me. What I read -- in the space of just two short sentences -- jumped off the page and really made me think.

This one thing is what I am about to share, and I'm calling it my Thought for the Day. It's a great morsel of information -- short, sweet, easy to digest, and perfectly powerful -- and so I invite you to read on, let this string of words sink into your mind, think about it over the course of the day, and then determine how you might use it in your own life. And then come back tomorrow, when another Thought for the Day will await you.

Think about this:

More than half of all cancer deaths can be prevented by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Poor nutrition, obesity, physical inactivity, and cigarette smoking together account for 63 percent of all cancer deaths.

The American Journal of Preventive Medicine issued a report that stated American cigarette warning labels are the smallest and have the least detail printed, making them the least effective.

Other countries such as Canada, Australia, and Britain have warnings that are much larger and include more health information appearing on both sides of the packages. Some countries even have very graphic warning labels printed on their cigarettes.

A study was conducted to see if these larger, more informed labels could make a difference. The study included 15,000 adult smokers in the U.S., U.K, Canada, and Australia to test the effectiveness of the warning labels used in those four countries between 2002 - 2005.

The research did suggest that U.S. smokers might benefit from large graphic warnings on the packages. The U.S. smokers were least likely to notice their American labeling. The researchers also concluded that the U.S. warnings are poor compared to those in other countries.

It is suggested that the U.S. labels need a makeover and putting quit-smoking resources on cigarette packages might also help.

Secondhand smoke rears its ugly head once again -- this time in the form of study results revealing high levels of secondhand smoke in the workplace can double the risk of lung cancer for non-smokers.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago looked at results from 22 studies conducted in the United States, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, and China. What they found -- and published in the American Journal of Public Health -- is a lung cancer risk 50 percent higher than normal for non-smokers exposed to smoke on the job for more than 30 years. They also found risk increases with level of exposure.

"We believe that our study provides the strongest evidence to date that smoking in the workplace does present a substantial risk to workers -- and particularly to workers who are working in highly exposed areas such as bar workers or restaurant workers," lead researcher Leslie Stayner said.

Previous evidence for increased lung cancer risk caused by secondhand smoke comes from studies of non-smokers married to smokers.

Secondhand smoke -- also known as passive smoke and environmental tobacco smoke -- is smoke from a cigarette, pipe, or cigar as well as smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers and inhaled by non-smokers. It can cause cancer, respiratory problems, and asthma in non-smokers and is leading to increased efforts by communities to ban or limit smoking in the workplace.

This week in France, bans begin in offices, stores, schools, and hospitals. Come January 2008, cafes and restaurants must also comply with bans. For now, smoking in these areas is permitted in hermetically sealed rooms without any services.

Its never too late to quit smoking, says a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Its even beneficial if you have already been diagnosed with lung cancer.

The research showed that those who quit smoking after being diagnosed became less severely impaired by the disease than those that continued to smoke. The ability for the person to care for themselves and handle daily routines was increased when they gave up the habit.

Even though the study did not show an increased survival benefit for those that quit, they noted that continued smoking may deteriorate a lung cancer patient's quality of life by starving their tissues of oxygen, which worsens outcomes from chemotherapy and radiation.

Don't ever think its pointless to quit!

ABC World News Tonight partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute and the North American Quitline Consortium to present a special series Quit to Live. According to statistics, approximately 440,000 Americans will die from smoking-related illnesses this year. A more encouraging statistic is while there are 46 million smokers, for the first time, there are more ex-smokers than smokers.

The Quit to Live series is a comprehensive resource for the 70 percent of smokers who have indicated they are interested in quitting. At Quit to Live, you can watch the complete special series coverage in video broadcast reports; watch broadcast plus exclusive web-only content; view the videoblogs of Tracy, Jose, Meg and Alyce; how to quit thinking about quitting and compare different methods and find groups that can help.

You can read ABC medical editor Dr. Tim Johnson and experts from the nation's leading cancer centers answers to questions about smoking at Ask Tim. In addition to original reports and reviewed resources, they offer community to connect with others. This week, ABC News revisited the Quit to Live special series on the anniversary of Peter Jennings death to lung cancer. Any smoker interested in quitting will find this special series of great value -- you might want to start by watching the video Expert Interview on How to Quit.

According to experts, nicotine alone is not a cancer-causing agent. However, Srikumar Chellappan and University of South Florida researchers report that nicotine does promote cancer by stimulating cancer cells in the growth of lung cancer tumors.

The researchers explain that tobacco smoke contains a variety of tobacco-specific carcinogens, many of which are derivatives of nicotine that are formed during the curing of tobacco. Researchers studied receptors that bind nicotine, known as nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, nAChRs, and found this process to be in part responsible in the cell proliferation and the progression of lung cancer tumors.

The research article Nicotine induces cell proliferation in its entirety is available online as a PDF document.

The World Cup, called by some the mother of all international soccer competitions, is held every four years. Hosted this time in Germany, national teams representing 32 countries will compete for the world championship title. World Cup fever is rising, as the first day of the tournament approaches, but the heat is not all due to the frenzied excitement of the three million fans who will attend the games. Cancer advocacy groups and health organizations are none to happy about the fact that while the FIFA will ask fans to voluntarily refrain from smoking, they will not issue a straight-out ban on smoking. According to the low-down on the reasons for the strong objection on the polite request that smokers not smoke with no legal enforcement, it is noted that cigarette lighters and ashtrays will be sold at the games. So, are they asking smokers not to smoke, but just in case they forgot their lighter or need an ashtray, smokers will be able to purchase them at the games?

The World Health Organization, WHO, signed a deal with FIFA four years ago to make the 2002 World Cup games tobacco-free in a deal it hoped would set a precedent for future tournaments. But FIFA declined to renew the agreement for the 2006 event after discussions with the German government and the local organizing committee. According to WHO, billions of people are expected to watch the televised matches around the world and they are concerned, as are all the health organizations and health advocates, that this will send the wrong message about smoking. I know I am sort of confused.

I first discovered Outta Body Mommy Deborah when we were both blogging in the AOL Journals community. I was in the middle of redecorating our home and she was in the middle of building a brand new home. Deborah had posted so you want to build a new home? some of the tips I learned when building a house, and before I got to tip twenty I was reduced into tears of laughter. Here was a woman who understood the intricacies and monumental frustration of remodeling/building a dream home and could take it all, wrap it up in a blog post, and make it all seem easier to handle. She has a way of taking the daily -- the mundane -- the foibles of being imperfectly human living in an imperfect world -- and transform life with her unique perspective into something you can laugh at, understand and finally accept. You claim and wholly own the frayed and tattered edges of how things really are as opposed to how you wish or imagine. When Outta Body Mommy moved to Blogger, I followed the thirty-something mother of three as she enrolled as a full-time college student.

Deborah and her blog have moved again, settling in over at Meredith Vieira's Club Mom, where she has been hired to blog her effort to quit smoking. She knows it's bad for her health and sets a bad example for her children. But in the usual Outta Body Mommy blog style, she is tackling smoking with the same personal voice in writing she has applied to every other aspect of her life. It won't be politically correct, it won't be sugar-coated, she won't write to gain the approval of anyone, and as a result, it will be real. Outta Body Mommy Deborah begins with meet me in the garage.

The Tobacco Control has published a research paper indicating that teens who smoke just one cigarette at the age of 11 are twice as likely to take up a regular smoking habit in the later teen years than peers who do not experiment with smoking at the same age.

Based on an observational study of young teens in South London, researchers state that their findings provide the first clear evidence of a sleeper effect or period of dormant vulnerability for teenagers who experiment with smoking just one time. It seems just one cigarette rewards a pathway in the brain that is then activated a few years down the road by stress factors, depression or the social pressures typical in a school environment.

The results of the study sound eerily familiar to the way heroin addiction is described, and when I first read it, that is what I kept thinking they were talking about -- heroin addiction. Nicotine is as powerful as heroine in grabbing hold on the user in what becomes a life-long struggle to escape. Available as a PDF document, the research paper is available here.

There are as many carcinogens in marijuana as there are in tobacco, but researchers were surprised to find that people who smoke marijuana are not at an increased risk for developing lung cancer. In fact, marijuana smokers might be receiving a weak level of cancer prevention. People who smoke cigarettes are definitely at a greater risk for developing cancer as a result of smoking, and the more they smoke tobacco, the greater the risk for cancer. But pot smokers do not seem to share the same risk.

According to researchers, and the research, even very heavy, long-term marijuana users who had smoked more than 22,000 joints over a lifetime seemed to have no greater risk than infrequent marijuana users or those who never smoked.

Wondering why? Researchers believe it is the THC in marijuana that acts as protection against the damage experienced by any carcinogens a marijuana smoker is exposed to while smoking. Past research has shown that THC has anti-tumor properties. So much for that argument against medical marijuana use.