Woman’s cancer killed by measles virus in unprecedented trial

Her name is Stacy Erholtz. For years, the 50-year-old mom from Pequot Lakes, Minn., battled myeloma, a blood cancer that affects bone marrow. She had few options left.

She had been through chemotherapy treatments and two stem cell transplants. But it wasn’t enough. Soon, scans showed she had tumors growing all over her body.

One grew on her forehead, destroying a bone in her skull and pushing on her brain. Her children named it Evan, her doctor said. Cancer had infiltrated her bone marrow.

So, as part of a two-patient clinical trial, doctors at the Mayo Clinic injected Erholtz with 100 billion units of the measles virus – enough to inoculate 10 million people.

Her doctor said they were entering the unknown.
Five minutes into the hour-long process, Erholtz got a terrible headache. Two hours later, she started shaking and vomiting. Her temperature hit 105 degrees, Stephen Russell the lead researcher on the case, told The Washington Post early Thursday morning.

“Thirty-six hours after the virus infusion was finished, she told me, ‘Evan has started shrinking,’” Russell said. Over the next several weeks, the tumor on her forehead disappeared completely and, over time, the other tumors in her body did, too.

Russell said he and his team had engineered the virus to make it more suitable for cancer therapy. And, after just one dose of it, Erholtz’s cancer went into remission. She has been completely cleared of the disease, Russell wrote in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Though, in this trial, the treatments were successful on only one of the two patients.
 

Primeras olas fuera de la Tierra

Después de una larga búsqueda, los científicos planetarios por fin han encontrado las señales de lo que parecen ser olas en los mares de Titán, la mayor luna de Saturno y uno de los mundos más parecidos a la Tierra del Sistema Solar. 

 

La sonda Cassini de la NASA localizó unos extraños reflejos en la superficie de Punga Mare, uno de los mares de hidrocarburos de Titán, en 2012 y 2013. Los reflejos pueden prevenir de pequeñas ondas, de no más de 2 cm de altura, que perturban un océano plano. 

Además, los investigadores creen que más olas pueden aparecer en los próximos años, ya que se esperan vientos en el hemisferio norte de esa luna, donde se encuentran la mayor parte de sus mares, al finalizar el invierno y acercarse la primavera. Pronosticar el tiempo en Titán es realmente complicado, pero los vientos, quizás incluso huracanes, podrían producir nuevas ondulaciones. El tiempo es tan frío que se dudaba si se podían producir olas de mar.

Genetics plays a role in your maths talent

A new study made by people from the university of Ohio (USA) shows how some people could be predisposed to be better in maths than others because of some genetic factors.

For proving this, they made an experiment with more than 200 twins and 300 fraternal twins who where evaluated since they where 9 until they were 15 years old. They evaluated them by doing maths anxiety tests, general anxiety tests, solving maths problems and reading understanding. The results showed that almost 40% of the anxiety differences were related to genetic factors.

The fact that some children or even adults have fear of maths has a genetic component. This difficults solving problems, so it can have a deep effect on learning.

All this doesn't mean that all the problems people have with maths are due to the genetic factors, because other factors suchas the school, our home... play also an important role.

Music training in childhood might make our brain faster

A new study has shown that even a little musical training in early childhood has a lasting, positive effect on how the brain processes sound.

The recent studies made by the Northwestern University affirm that playing a musical instruments changes the fisionomy of the brain. And they tried to find out if that changes continued after the music training stops.

This study was published in The Journal of Neuroscience, they tested 44 adults, some of them had a musical training in their childhood (they started more or less at the age of 9) and some others did not.

They tested how the brain of these people responded to fast changing sounds.

The experiment consisted on measuring the brain activity while the participants listened to synthesized speech syllables.

The researches discovered that although they didn't have played an instrument fir ears, if the did from 4 to 14 years of trainig they had a fastest response to the speech sound ( more or less a millisecond faster than the ones who didn't have a musical training)

Maybe a millisecond is not that impressive, but when you take into account the great mass of processes that our neurons do, you realize that is not just a millisecond, it ccan make a great difference.

They found out too that the more years the study participants spent training, the faster they were.

So, just stop losing your time and become a musician!

Transgenic soy: bread for today, hunger for tomorrow.

Monoculture has an unstoppable progress in Latin America. Only in 2012 were planted in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay 50 million hectares of transgenic soy. That is, an area of ​​over 200.000 kilometers the size of Italy; 150.000 kilometers over Germany's size and more than all Spain together.

The high value of the legume that has all eight essential aminoacids, soy has become a nutritional and therapeutic panacea.

According to research conducted by the University of Buffalo in the United States (U.S.), women entering this legume to your diet suffer 60% less breast tumor type. In men prevents prostate cancer.

But not everything is joy in the increasingly fashionable world of soy. This unique monoculture is destroying forests, replacing the territories previously devoted to wheat, corn and meat production, throwing out family farmers, indigenous and rural workers, and poisoning the water, land and air with genetically modified seeds and pesticides increasingly toxic. 

Can olive oil prevent cancer?

It is now conceded that there is a relationship between diet and the development of a large number of malignant tumours. Cell oxidation is one of the major risks in the formation of cancer: the more susceptible the cell is to oxygen, the greater the risk of cancer.The types of cancer most closely associated with diet are colon-rectal, prostate and breast cancer.Recent research has revealed that the type of fat seems to have more implications for cancer incidence than the quantity of fat.

Epidemiological studies suggest that olive oil exerts a protective effect against certain malignant tumours (breast, prostate, endometrium, digestive tract, …).

A number of research studies have documented that olive oil reduces the risk of breast cancer. Eating a healthy diet with olive oil as the main source of fat could considerably lower cancer incidence. The reason is that the cell mutations caused by cancer are partly due to toxins which, when consumed through the diet, attack DNA. On passing through the liver, these toxins produce free radicals that then attack DNA. To combat such free radicals, the body needs vitamins and antioxidants like those contained in olive oil.

It has also been reported that an olive-oil-rich diet is associated with reduced risk of bowel cancer. The protective effect of olive oil is irrespective of the amount of fruit and vegetables eaten in the diet.

Recent studies have demonstrated that olive oil provides protection against cancer of the colon. Lately, research has been looking into the metabolic implications of fats, more specifically the protective role of olive oil in chronic liver disease and in the disorder of the intestines known as Crohn's disease. Results point to beneficial effects of olive oil on pre-cancerous lesions. After analysing three types of diet, research scientists arrived at various conclusions. The olive oil diet reduced the number of cancerous lesions; the number of tumours that developed was clearly and significantly low; and the tumours were less aggressive and had a better prognosis.

This beneficial effect could be related to oleic acid, the predominant monounsaturated fatty acid in olive oil. It has been observed that this fatty acid lowers the production of prostaglandins derived from arachidonic acid, which in turn plays a significant part in the production and development of tumours.

However, it is not excluded that other constituents of olive oil, such as antioxidants, flavonoids, polyphenols and squalene may also have a positive influence. Squalene is believed to have a favourable effect on the skin by reducing the incidence of melanomas.

Much has still to be discovered about how olive oil affects cancer and concrete data are still lacking on the mechanisms behind the beneficial role it plays in the prevention or inhibitionof the growth of different types of cancer. However, according to the information available at present, olive oil could actsimultaneously during the different stages involved in the process of cancer formation.

“Maternal instincts” seen in group of colorful beetles

A group of re­lat­ed, col­or­ful bee­tles in the thick fo­li­age of trop­i­cal forests shows signs of ma­ter­nal in­stincts and act­ive care, sci­en­tists say.
In a re­port, re­search­ers de­scribed “ma­ter­nal” be­hav­iors in eight spe­cies with­in a sub­family of leaf bee­tles known as broad-shouldered leaf bee­tles, or Chry­so­meli­nae. The find­ings were pub­lished in a spe­cial is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Zookeys.

Larvae of the spe­cies Dory­phora pay­kullimove am­ong leaves, fol­lowed by their mot­her, in Pa­na­ma. (Credit: S. Van Bael)

Moth­ers “ac­tively de­fend off­spring” as well as the eggs, wrote the re­search­ers, Don­ald M. Wind­sor of the Smith­so­nian Trop­i­cal Re­search In­sti­tute in Balboa-Ancon, Pan­a­ma, and col­leagues.

Maternal care in in­sects is rarely seen in such act­ive forms, though com­mon in lower-level forms such as in­sects posi­tioning their eggs so the new­borns will have ac­cess to a good food source.

Bee­tle moth­ers in two spe­cies within the Chry­so­meli­nae group treated the leaf on which their young­sters were born as a sort of nest to be pro­tected, the sci­en­tists found. The moth­ers re­acted ag­gres­sively to in­vaders, and charged to­ward the edge the leaf when a per­son put a thin stick in the ar­ea, they wrote. Stamp­ing and leaf-shak­ing were other com­mon re­act­ions, they added.

A cam­era held 10 cm (4 inches) un­der and to the side of the “na­tal leaf” got the strong­est re­ac­tion, according to the scien-tists. Moth­ers also were found to “guard” lar­vae by strad­dling them.

Oth­er spe­cies of bee­tles showed “less ag­gres­sive” forms of ma­ter­nal care, they added. The sci­en­tists said some moth­ers seem to make changes to the leaves where their off­spring are born. And once the young bee­tles, or lar­vae, are born, some moth­ers were de­scribed as “herd­ing” them to make them go in de­sired di­rec­tions and keep them to­geth­er in lit­tle groups.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tors said it’s not clear why these be­hav­iors evolved in these Cen­tral and South Amer­i­can bee­tles. “Large voids re­main in our un­der­stand­ing of the nat­u­ral his­to­ry of both groups, in­clud­ing the ident­ity and im­por­tance of preda­tors and par­a­sitoids and the di­verse ways in which moth­ers may be in­flu­enc­ing the sur­viv­al of off­spring,” Wind­sor and col­leagues wrote.