Happy Monday listeners. Let's kick off the first full week of August by catching up on some science news.

For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman.

Last Wednesday, researchers with the American Cancer Society published a study suggesting that for a number of cancers, case rates are rising from one generation to the next.

They looked at 34 different cancers and in

eight of them incidents rates went up with every five-year interval they looked at

from 1920 to 1990. So in other words, the cohort born in 1965 had higher rates than the

cohort born in 1960, but lower rates than the 1970 cohort and so on. In another nine cancers, while rates had

declined for some period of time, they started to rise again in younger cohorts

recently. The researchers emphasize that they don't yet have a

conclusive explanation for the trend. And while headlines often point to sedentary lifestyles

and higher weights as a leading culprit. That's

particularly true for a recent surge in colorectal cancers and young people. Other

experts have sounded the alarm to say that these factors alone cannot explain the spike.

But we did get some good news on that front.

Last Monday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new blood test for colorectal cancer.

Garden Health's test is called Shield,

and it was previously available as a diagnostic tool

for doctors, but its out-of-pocket price tag

ran almost $900.

Hopefully now that it's FDA approved, it will be covered by more insurance carriers.

Shield isn't a replacement for colonoscopies.

Those procedures are crucial for spotting and even removing the polyps that can lead to colon cancer, and of course for detecting cancer itself.

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