New Drug Discovery could Halt Spread of Brain Cancer

Chase Cornelison is a post-doctoral researcher at Virginia Tech and lead author of an article published in Scientific Reports that details a solution to stopping the spread of glioblastoma in the brain.

Chase Cornelison is a post-doctoral researcher at Virginia Tech and lead author of an article published in Scientific Reports that details a solution to stopping the spread of glioblastoma in the brain.

A team of researchers may have found a solution to stopping the spread of glioblastoma with a new drug and cancer treatment method. In people who have glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer, this fluid has a much higher pressure, causing it to move fast and forcing cancer cells to spread. And a common cancer therapy, which inserts a drug directly into the tumor with a catheter, can make this fluid move even faster.

A team of researchers at Virginia Tech, led by Jennifer Munson, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics in the College of Engin...

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Exoplanet Stepping Stones

This is an artist's impression based on published scientific data on the HR 8799 solar system. The magenta, HR 8799c planet is in the foreground. Compared to Jupiter, this gas giant is about seven times more massive and has a radius that is 20 percent larger. HR 8799c's planetary companions, d and b are in the background, orbiting their host star. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko/C. Alvarez

This is an artist’s impression based on published scientific data on the HR 8799 solar system. The magenta, HR 8799c planet is in the foreground. Compared to Jupiter, this gas giant is about seven times more massive and has a radius that is 20 percent larger. HR 8799c’s planetary companions, d and b are in the background, orbiting their host star. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko/C. Alvarez

Researchers are perfecting technology to one day look for signs of alien life. Astronomers have gleaned some of the best data yet on the composition of a planet known as HR 8799c – a young giant gas planet about 7 times the mass of Jupiter that orbits its star every 200 years.

The team used state-of-the art instrumentation at the W. M...

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How to Melt Gold at Room Temperature

The illustration shows the atoms of a gold cone exposed to a strong electric field. We also see the field (around the tip of the cone) that excites the gold atoms. They break almost all their connections to each other and the surface layers begin to melt.​ ​​​​​ ​Illustration: Alexander Ericson

The illustration shows the atoms of a gold cone exposed to a strong electric field. We also see the field (around the tip of the cone) that excites the gold atoms. They break almost all their connections to each other and the surface layers begin to melt. Credit: Alexander Ericson

When the tension rises, unexpected things can happen – not least when it comes to gold atoms. Researchers from, among others, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have now managed, for the first time, to make the surface of a gold object melt at room temperature.

Ludvig de Knoop, from Chalmers’ Department of Physics, placed a small piece of gold in an electron microscope...

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Scientists discover new ‘Pinwheel’ star system

This is an image of Apep captured at 8 microns in the thermal infrared with the VISIR camera on the European Southern Observatory's VLT telescope, Mt Paranal, Chile. Credit: University of Sydney/European Southern Observatory

This is an image of Apep captured at 8 microns in the thermal infrared with the VISIR camera on the European Southern Observatory’s VLT telescope, Mt Paranal, Chile.
Credit: University of Sydney/European Southern Observatory

Finding raises new questions about ‘star deaths’. An international team of scientists has discovered a new, massive star system – one that also challenges existing theories of how large stars eventually die.

“This system is likely the first of its kind ever discovered in our own galaxy,” says Benjamin Pope, a NASA Sagan fellow at New York University’s Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and one of the researchers.

Specifically, the scientists detected a gamma-ray burst progenitor system – a type of supernova that blasts out an extremely powerful and narrow jet of ...

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