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A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission. The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population.

Since Morgan Spurlock is known for fully immersing himself in his movies - famously subsisting onMcDonald's menu items for "Super Size Me" and pounding the pavement for every last product placement dollar in "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" - it seemed only appropriate to ask the man behind"Mansome" about his go-to grooming products and tools, most of which happen to come from boutique shaving brand the Art of Shaving, which signed on to sponsor the...

It's a vivid memory of summertime camp-outs -- that circle of silhouettes huddled around a crackling fire late at night, faces illuminated by flames and occasionally obscured by smoke. Unbelievable tales were told around this ring, secrets were whispered, solemn pacts were made. Stars shot across the sky and owls screeched. Friendships formed. You can't go back, of course, but the intimacy of a shared outdoor fire doesn't have to be relegated to childhood memories.

Eat. Pray. Love. Spritz. Now inhale deeply and feel your life transform. It's only May, but 2012 is already shaping up as the year perfume wafted from the lively online blogs and into mainstream publishing in a big way. These days, new fragrance releases are greeted - and critiqued - with the intellectual sophistication formerly reserved for Paris fashion shows. Perfume is an art form and the "noses" who compose cutting-edge fragrances are rock stars. Writers, always hip to the zeitgeist, are avidly chronicling this renaissance and some books have even inspired their own perfumes.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

Counting the days until summer vacation starts, students at Brea-Olinda High School who are hoping a job will fall into their laps may be in for a bit of a jolt. Normally, the Orange County school's job board is stocked with 25 to 30 notices from prospective employers this time of year. This spring, however, there are only half as many job offers on the board. "We haven't been getting a lot of calls from business people," said Jim McWilliam, the school's career guidance specialist.

IF it's been a year or two since you've shopped for a mattress, you're in for some surprises. That memory foam bed that once seemed so novel? It's now decidedly mainstream. Latex is the hot material of choice. And that's not all that's changed. Choices are multiplying -- especially on the luxury end -- and prices are too.

As temp jobs go, Saroj Mehli has landed what she feels is a pretty sweet deal. It's a nine-month gig, no special skills needed, and the only real labor comes at the end -- when she gives birth. If everything goes according to plan, Mehli, 32, will deliver a healthy baby early next year. But rather than join her other three children, the newborn will be handed over to an American couple who are unable to bear a child on their own and are hiring Mehli to do it for them.

On any given day, in downtown lofts, Santa Monica ateliers and dozens of studios across Los Angeles, dressing rooms are filled with men and women who are slipping into suits, dresses and jeans that fit as if they were made just for them — because they were. They are donning custom-made wedding gowns, dress shirts, even entire wardrobes. Whether they were propelled there by the frustrations of poorly fitting commercial clothes or by a sense of style that isn't part of the trend du jour, they've discovered the rewards of made-to-order clothing.

Like many honor students with dreams of going to an Ivy League university, Burton Liao has been taking a test preparation course to boost his scores on college entrance exams. But unlike his classmates in the summer program, Liao has plenty of time left to learn SAT vocabulary words and score-boosting strategies before the big test day arrives. He's only 13 years old.

Ian and I watched the planes come in and shared a wedge salad at Encounter, the Space Age-themed restaurant overlooking Los Angeles International Airport. I asked how it made him feel. "Fine," he shrugged. "It's not eating at airports that I'm afraid of. " We weren't there to catch a flight. We were completing homework from Ian's therapist, who was trying to desensitize him to the airport environment. The next month, I was returning to my home state of Michigan for a good friend's wedding.

Cranberry is not vodka's best friend. Real vodka drinkers know this, but for years their taste has been marginalized by a craft cocktail scene obsessed with whiskey. Change is on the horizon, however. As Los Angeles bartenders vie to keep up with the next trending drink wave, venues all over town are favoring clear spirits. Well-regarded mixologists including Aidan Demarest and Marcos Tello of the cocktail consulting firm Tello/Demarest Liquid Assets are leading the way, serving as brand ambassadors to Stoli Elit vodka and Bols Genever (a grain-based, gin-like spirit)

Beatrix Molnar, 33, fell in love with Jason Whipple, 39, after dating him for just a few weeks. “He came over to my place and sharpened my knives for me,” she said. “It was such a small, sweet gesture that really resonated and stuck with me.” The couple met online in 2010, but realized they lived less than two miles from each other in Long Beach. “His old apartment is visible from my drive to work in downtown and I remember thinking I'd be really bummed if this didn't work out and I'd have to see his place on my drive to work every day,” Molnar said.

When I discovered I was pregnant with our second child, I pulled out the storage bin containing the maternity clothes from my first pregnancy and was instantly depressed. After nine months of wearing a Diane von Furstenberg maternity wrap dress and Lilly Pulitzer maternity shift in heavy rotation — and I mean heavy in every sense — I couldn't face another pregnancy in these same few outfits. But at $300 for designer maternity dresses I would wear another half a year at most, I wasn't prepared to splurge on an entirely new pregnancy wardrobe.

The butcher is back. After decades of laboring in obscurity, seeing their craft slip away to the point it was practically extinct, butchers — real meat cutters, not guys who repackage steaks from Cryovac bags — are regaining their respected place in the food chain. You can see it in the crowds at Lindy & Grundy on Fairfax Avenue and at McCall's Meat & Fish Co. in Los Feliz, where customers line up outside when word comes in that a whole pig has been delivered. Southern California meat market standbys, including the Huntington Meats and Marconda's Meats in the original Farmers Market, high-end supermarket chains Bristol Farms, Gelson's and Whole Foods, are seeing business pick up. There's even a MEAT club at UCLA — the Meat Education and Appreciation Team — that sponsors meat cooking events, including trips to butcher shops for private lessons.

KABUL, Afghanistan - In many ways, the two young soldiers were not so different from each other. Each was tough-minded and physically powerful. Each worked hard to win a place in an elite military unit, and spoke with pride of serving his country. They were 25 years old, these two: one newly married, the other planning a wedding this year. Their upbringings were as disparate as their homelands were distant, but religious faith was entwined with the family lives of both.

Leisure wear is looking awfully work-like these days. Consider Carhartt Inc., which has been outfitting plumbers, delivery people and farmers in shirts, jackets and bib overalls for 104 years. The family-owned company unexpectedly found itself on fashion's cutting edge two years ago when a small circle of rap singers took to wearing Carhartt jackets and overalls on stage.

Her lips were blue. Her teeth were chattering. Her legs had become dysfunctional logs that could barely walk, much less run. For four hours on a sunless Arizona day in January, with 30-degree windchill over 121/2 miles of steep trails, 28-year-old Keri Dionizio of Fullerton was covered in mud, soaked to the bone and freezing. She had jumped with three teammates off a 30-foot plank into a muddy pond. She'd crawled on hands and knees through water-filled tunnels, scaled 12-foot wooden walls and 40-foot nets, carried a giant log over her shoulder for 100 yards and plunged into a pool of ice water, fighting through 3 feet of giant ice cubes to reach oxygen.

Earlier this week, long-languishing NBC ordered a fall sitcom with an apt title: "Save Me. " As they get ready to roll out their fall lineups next week in New York, rival networks know the feeling. TV executives are scrambling to counter steep drop-offs among young-adult viewers and some record-low series ratings this spring. Fox's once-dominant singing show"American Idol" has seen ratings tumble by nearly 30% to its lowest totals since summer 2002, according to Nielsen. Of the Top 10 programs this season among total viewers, not a single freshman series makes the cut. And for viewers ages 18 to 49 - the category most advertisers care about - the only first-season shows to attain genuine hit status areCBS' raunchy sitcom"2 Broke Girls" and Fox's over-the-top singing contest"The X Factor" - both barely scraping under the wire at Nos. 9 and 10 respectively.

Last year, when the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals curtailed the Federal Communications Commission's powers to punish networks for "fleeting expletives," many worried that network television would become a battlefield of exploding F-bombs and barely bleeped C-words. Turns out, all the decision, currently under review by the Supreme Court, did was unleash the "bitches. " Sure, there have been a few more "damns" and "hells" and S-words, some F-bleeps and a lot of playful word compounds beginning with "ass.