Cans of soft drink. Cooling frozen and with water drops

Drinking artificially sweetened beverages is associated with a significantly lower risk of colon cancer recurrence and cancer death, a team of investigators led by a Yale Cancer Center scientist has found. The study was published today in PLOS ONE.

“Artificially sweetened drinks have a checkered reputation in the public because of purported health risks that have never really been documented,” said the study’s senior author, Charles S. Fuchs, M.D., director of Yale Cancer Center. “Our study clearly shows they help avoid cancer recurrence and death in patients who have been treated for advanced colon cancer, and that is an exciting finding.”

Fuchs and his team of researchers found that in the 1,018-patient analysis, those participants ...

Illustration of Parker Solar Probe circling the Sun.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

This summer, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will launch to travel closer to the Sun, deeper into the solar atmosphere, than any mission before it. If Earth was at one end of a yard-stick and the Sun on the other, Parker Solar Probe will make it to within four inches of the solar surface. Inside that part of the solar atmosphere, a region known as the corona, Parker Solar Probe will provide unprecedented observations of what drives the wide range of particles, energy and heat that course through the region – flinging particles outward into the solar system and far past Neptune.

Inside the corona, it’s also, of course, unimaginably hot...

This artist’s illustration depicts the destruction of a young planet, which scientists may have witnessed for the first time. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

An analysis of X-ray data suggests the first observations of a star swallowing a planet, and may also explain the star’s mysterious dimming. For nearly a century, astronomers have puzzled over the curious variability of young stars residing in the Taurus-Auriga constellation some 450 light years from Earth. One star in particular has drawn astronomers’ attention. Every few decades, the star’s light has faded briefly before brightening again.

In recent years, astronomers have observed the star dimming more frequently, and for longer periods, raising the question: What is repeatedly obscuring the star? The answer, astronomers believe, could sh...