It’s a hard life (and death) being a French king. Even if you’re popular, you’re assassinated. Revolutionaries disinter your body long after your death and make off with your mummified head. And then finally, 400 years after your death, your head supposedly turns up in the garage of a collector.

This week a team led by Philippe Charlier reports to have identified the head of the monarch in this story, France’s King Henri IV. The researchers report their find in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal, which is known for its tradition of bizarre topics and occasional spoof articles, but Charlier and company appear to be on the level about identifying the remains of the first Bourbon king.

Known as “the green gallant” in his time, Henri’s extraordinary popularity didn’t prevent him from being whacked in 1610—then having his remains ransacked by revolutionaries nearly 200 years later. Reports of his head passing between private hands have surfaced over the centuries, most recently after one collector bought it for three francs in 1919, then tried—and failed—to have it authenticated for display in French museums. It came into possession of an 84 year-old man who has kept it stashed in his garage since 1955. [TIME]

Charlier and colleagues say they could not recover uncontaminated samples of mitochondrial DNA, which would have allowed for genetic testing. So, as an alternative, they found several ways to compare what was left of the embalmed head to what historians know about Henri IV (not to be confused with Henry IV of England, subject of two Shakespeare plays).

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The results were so staggering that they stopped the study ahead of schedule to get the word out: A giant study by the National Cancer Institute of more than 50,000 heavy smokers has found a 20 percent reduction in deaths among patients who received a CT scan to catch potential cancer as opposed to a simple X-ray.

“This is huge,” said Dr. Reggie Munden, a University of Texas M.D. Anderson diagnostic radiologist who led the research conducted at the Houston cancer center, one of 33 sites nationally. “It’s a massive ray of hope that we can now offer a scientifically proven test to people at risk of lung cancer and pick up tumors before they’re considered lethal.” [Houston Chronicle]

Participants in the study, which began in 2002, had smoked about a pack a day for at least 30 years (or the equivalent—two packs for 15 years). They received a screening via either CT scan or X-ray three times a year. While the X-ray group lost 442 people to lung cancer, the CT group saw only 354 lung cancer deaths.

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Are CT scans putting thousands of people in unnecessary jeopardy for cancers and death? That was the suggestion by two new studies out this week, leaving radiologists scrambling to explain the true level of danger to worried patients.

A CT scan, also known as computed tomography, gives doctors a view inside the body, often eliminating the need for exploratory surgery. But CT scans involve a much higher radiation dose than conventional X-rays. A chest CT scan exposes the patient to more than 100 times the radiation dose of a typical chest X-ray [Reuters]. However, a study out of the University of California, San Francisco says, we might not have as good a handle on CT radiation as we thought. The researchers found that radiation differed greatly between machines, and some emitted 13 times more than others.

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