Author: hfhadmin

Israeli scientists have just made a major breakthrough in cancer research, claiming they have used Nobel Prize-winning tech to successfully eliminate cancerous cells in mice, while leaving healthy ones intact.

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide. A lot of people are diagnosed with and die from cancer each year, and many others struggle to combat the disease daily.

Therefore, the entire world eagerly waits for advancements and findings in the area that would help save more lives.

The CRISPR Cas-9 gene-editing system is used to make laser-sharp alterations to DNA. This year, its creators, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their amazing discovery.

The paper by professor Dan Pee, published in the4 Science Advances journal, revealed that with the help of their system, Tel Aviv University scientists have managed to treat cancer in animals.

According to Peer, who is the head of the Laboratory of Precision NanoMedicine at the university, the process is a “more elegant chemotherapy” and claimed that there are “no side effects”.

He said:

“We believe that a cancer cell treated in this way will never become active again. This technology can extend the life expectancy of cancer patients and we hope, one day, cure the disease.”

Tonight is National #STEMDay!!

We’d like to highlight some of our favourite #WomenInSTEM starting with
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier who made history this year with their joint win of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

📸 Alexander Heinel/Picture Alliance/DPA pic.twitter.com/oK0lcmLeRM

— Wengage (@WengageApp) November 8, 2020

Plus, Peer added that the procedure can eliminate a tumor in a matter of three sessions:

“This technology can physically cut the DNA in cancerous cells, and those cells will not survive.”

NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to two women for the first time.

Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier won for their pioneering work on a gene editing tool.

This comes after another woman, Andrea Chez, won the Nobel Prize in Physics. pic.twitter.com/wdtuHbVI8C

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) October 7, 2020

Peer explained that he hopes that this treatment can soon replace chemotherapy, which is linked to numerous damaging side-effects.

He and his team intend to develop a treatment for all cancer types in humans in the next two years. The trials were conducted on mice who suffered from glioblastoma, brain cancer, and metastatic ovarian cancer.

The treated mice were given a double life expectancy from the rest, with a 30% survival rate. The system is currently only being implemented for rare cell diseases that have already been taken out of patients’ bodies.

My @i24NEWS_EN interview with Professor Dan Peer, head of the Laboratory of precision nanomedicine @peer_lab at Tel Aviv university, about some fascinating progress being made in the search for a cure for cancer, and how it all ties in with Coronavirus. Take a look! pic.twitter.com/waqx2PFewK

— Alec Pollard (@AlecHaimPollard) November 21, 2020

To personalize the treatment, the patient needs to undergo a biopsy. Peer added that they would administer a general or direct injection into the tumor. This injection contains messenger RNA that encodes the “tiny scissor function” for snipping the patient’s DNA.

The system identifies cancer cells and a lipid nanoparticle.

Peer concluded:

“When we first spoke of treatments with messenger RNA twelve years ago, people thought it was science fiction. I believe that in the near future, we will see many personalized treatments based on genetic messengers, for cancer and various genetic diseases.

The technology needs to be further developed, but the main thing is we have shown that this can kill cancer cells.”

Watch the video below for more information about this system:

Source: metro.co.uk

While trying to count bighorn sheep in the desert during a flyover in a remote south-eastern area of the US state, wildlife resources department workers noticed a strange object firmly planted in the ground.

If you are a Space Odyssey fan, the Utah desert will become your dream destination after reading this article! It turned out that the desert kept quiet about an incredibly strange object within it for too long!

Namely, Last week, a crew with the state wildlife resources department was aboard a helicopter that belongs to the Utah Department of Public Safety when they noticed a mysterious monolith showing out of the dirt below.

The bright metal figure was approximately 10 to 12 feet tall, and it was firmly situated in the ground, suggesting it wasn’t just dropped from above.

Officials indicated the possibility that the figure could have been built by an artist or a huge admirer of 2001: Space Odyssey – as the mysterious thing looks like the machines described in Arthur C. Clarke’s story!

• Worker with Utah’s wildlife resources department saw a shiny metal monolith, firmly planted in the ground.

The unmarked object is positioned inside a red rock cove. Yet, out of the fear that amateurs could get in danger trying to get a closer look, the workers did not reveal details about its exact location.

The crew was in the secluded zone to count bighorn sheep when they discovered the mysterious object.

Pilot Bret Hutchings said:

‘One of the biologists is the one who spotted it and we just happened to fly directly over the top of it. He was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, turn around, turn around!’ And I was like, ‘what.’ And he’s like, ‘There’s this thing back there – we’ve got to go look at it!’

The  helicopter then turned back and landed and the team went into the cove to explore.

Hutchings said:

‘We were thinking, Is this something NASA stuck up there or something? Are they bouncing satellites off it? We were kind of joking around that if one of us suddenly disappears, then the rest of us make a run for it.’

The @UtahDPS helicopter was assisting the @UtahDWR in counting bighorn sheep in remote southern Utah Wednesday when the crew encountered something entirely ‘out of this world’…@KSL5TV #KSLTV #Utah

Photojournalist: @Photog_Steve5 pic.twitter.com/f8P0fayDIS

— Andrew Adams (@AndrewAdamsKSL) November 21, 2020

• Officials assume it has been created by an artist or a huge fan of 2001: Space Odyssey

• The crew went in the area to count bighorn sheep

• ‘We were thinking, Is this something NASA stuck up there or something? Are they bouncing satellites off it?’ said Department of Public Safety pilot Bret Hutchings

• To show its size, state workers climb the monolith to give a sense of its size.

Jokes aside, Hutchings’ opinion is that the object is most likely some kind of artwork, done by “ some new wave artist” or  “ somebody that was a big [2001: A Space Odyssey] fan.”

• Department of Public Safety pilot Bret Hutchings said that the unmarked object ‘is about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying,’

• The monolith is located inside a red rock cove, but the exact location has not been revealed, to prevent others from endangering themselves trying to get a closer look

‘Land art’ is common in Utah, with strange installations that kept occurring far from population centers in the 1960s and ’70s. The most famous, built by artist Robert Smithson in 1970, is called Spiral Jetty. It is a 1,500-foot-long coil that is completely made of mud, salt crystals and basalt.

It is situated on the northeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point, and it appears and disappears depending on the level of the water.

• Utah has a history of ‘land art,’ unusual installations far from population centers.

However, up until now, no one has called to claim to be the creator of the monolith.

Hutchings concluded:

“That’s been about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying.”

The workers left everything in place, after recording a video and taking photos of the mysterious creation.

Looking for answers, photos were posted to social media, and most observers presumed it was installed by a sculptor. Many even added that it resembled the work of late minimalist artist John McCracken.

There were some otherworldly theories as well. What do you think? Any ideas?

• Bighorn sheep live in the southern half of Utah

Nevertheless, the strange metal object seems to not affect the bighorn sheep that reside in Utah’s southern half.

In early December, their mating season, the sheep are less cautious of humans, since they are focused on courtship and breeding. Therefore, they’ll allow vehicles to get closer to them than they normally would.

The population of bighorn sheep was dramatically reduced to under a thousand in the 1970s, but conservation efforts have helped increase their number in recent decades.

Source: www.bbc.com

Sediment data collected by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicates that floods of unimaginable magnitude washed through Gale Crater on Mars around 4 billion years ago.

I cannot recall a time when life on Mars was not the subject of a lively debate. The Red Planet has been in the center of our attention for too long.

We are eager to find out whether we, Earthlings, have always been this special, living on the only habitable environment in the Universe, or there once was ( or is?) life on Mars as well.

Scientists believe Mars was not always the global desert it is nowadays, but a new study found that in its distant past, this planet actually had significantly more surface than previously thought.

A team of researchers from Jackson State University, Cornell University, and the University of Hawaii worked together with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), to examine sediment data captured by the Curiosity Rover.

Scientists believe that the ‘raging megaflood’ the Rover has identified was likely a result of an asteroid or comet hitting the planet, heating and unleashing ice stored on the Martian surface.

78ft-deep water raged across the crater at 32-feet per second, creating gigantic ripples that are tell-tale structures familiar to scientists on Earth. According to co-author Alberto G. Fairén, this raises the possibility that life once existed there.

Namely, on our planet, “there is life” wherever there is water, so four billion years ago, microbial life may have developed on Mars too.

• Scientists believe that the ‘raging megaflood’ was a result of an asteroid or comet hitting the planet, heating and unleashing ice stored on the surface of Mars

• This close-up image of rocks reveal changes in the bed interval, indicating that water once flowed through the area

Ezat Heydari, one of the co-authors, explained that those massive ripples, called antidunes, are up to 30ft high and spread about 450ft apart.

Fairén said:

‘We identified megafloods for the first time using detailed sedimentological data observed by the rover Curiosity. Deposits left behind by megafloods had not been previously identified with orbiter data.”

• In one instance that water entered Gale Crater, and after mixing with water coming down from Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, it produced massive flash floods

Heydari added that the antidunes they have found are identical to the features formed by melting ice on Earth about two million years ago. The stocks of frozen water on Mars had to be subjected to a significant impact event to release carbon dioxide, methane, and the ice as water vapor.

According to researchers, the mixture of water vapor and gases has led to a short warm and wet period that could have resulted in the development of life.

The paper claims:

“The warm and wet climate persisted even after the flooding ended, but its duration cannot be determined by our study.”

The condensation from the heat generated by the impact is believed to have created clouds of water vapor which caused torrential rain – possibly across the planet.

Earlier, a study that used data from Curiosity demonstrated that about four billion years ago, there had been storms that filled lakes and rivers with rainfall on the planet.

These long-lived bodies of water indicate that the crater, as well as Mount Sharp within it, were capable of supporting microbial life.

• Curiosity sent back images and data for scientists to examine

In one instance, this water entered Gale Crater, and when mixed with water coming down from Mount Sharp in Gale Crater, it produced gigantic flash floods.

The deposits left behind on gravel ridges around the crater can be seen on Mars today.

• Graphic showing the terrain studied by Curiosity and where layers and antidunes have been spotted

• The Gale crater and its various topographic features, including the mountains and ripples produced by activity on the planet over billions of years

Fairén concluded:

“Early Mars was an extremely active planet from a geological point of view. The planet had the conditions needed to support the presence of liquid water on the surface – and on Earth, where there’s water, there’s life.

So early Mars was a habitable planet. Was it inhabited? That’s a question that the next rover Perseverance … will help to answer.”

Curiosity has been roaming Mars for over eight years (2950 sols or 3031 Earth days). Its successor, NASA’s Perseverance rover, which launched from Cape Canaveral on July 30, is scheduled to reach Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.

Source: observer.com