Since the first organisms appeared on Earth approximately 3.8 billion years ago, life on the planet has had some close calls. In the last 500 million years, Earth has undergone five mass extinctions, including the event 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. And while most scientists agree that a giant asteroid was responsible for that extinction, there’s much less consensus on what caused an even more devastating extinction more than 185 million years earlier.
The end-Permian extinction occurred 252.2 million years ago, decimating 90 percent of marine and terrestrial species, from snails and small crustaceans to early forms of lizards and amphibians. “The Great Dying,” as it’s now known, was the most severe mass extinction in Earth’s history, and is probably the closest life has come to being completely extinguished. Possible causes include immense volcanic eruptions, rapid depletion of oxygen in the oceans, and — an unlikely option — an asteroid collision.
Researchers across California are working to bring medical microscopes to our cellphones — and vastly improve field medicine.
You can use your cellphone to take pictures, get driving directions, and free imprisoned angry birds. And perhaps soon, analyze microscopic blood samples.
Three separate University of California research teams have each concocted a new technology that converts just about any handset with a decent camera into a mobile microscope. That’s a development that could have a huge impact on medicine in developing countries-allowing health care workers in shantytowns and rural villages far from a hospital to diagnose malaria, HIV, and other diseases on the spot.
Tumors can arise from different cell types in the pancreas, depending on the circumstances, according to MIT cancer biologists.
Pancreatic cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, killing an estimated 35,000 Americans each year. One of the reasons pancreatic cancer is so deadly is that it is hard to detect it in the early stages, and that’s partly because scientists aren't sure from which cell(s) it arises.
Now, in findings that could help answer that question, MIT cancer biologists have identified a subpopulation of cells that can give rise to this disease. They also found that tumors can form in other, more mature pancreatic cell types, but only when they are injured or inflamed, suggesting that pancreatic cancer can arise from different types of cells depending on the circumstances.
Findings Provide Clues for Treating Thousands of Patients Diagnosed Each Year
Although leukemia is one of the best studied cancers, the cause of some types is still poorly understood. Now, a newly found mutation in acute myeloid leukemia patients could account for half of the remaining cases of adult acute leukemia with an unknown origin.
“The molecular biology of leukemia has been studied for the last 20 years and we thought we had found most of the common genes for leukemia,” comments senior author Craig B. Thompson, MD, director of the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “Now we’re able to point to a distinct type of mutation for half of the remaining leukemias for which we didn’t know the cause and between one-quarter and one-third of leukemias in older patients.” The findings are described online this week in Cancer Cell.
Read more: Penn Researchers Find Genetic Link to Leukemias with an Unknown Origin
Changes in body fluid odors indicate presence of lung cancer tumors
New animal research from scientists at the Monell Center and collaborators demonstrates that body fluid odors can be used to identify animals with lung cancer tumors. The findings set the stage for studies to identify potential diagnostic biomarkers in the urine of human lung cancer patients.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, responsible for 1.3 million deaths annually. Effective techniques for early diagnosis are urgently needed, as the disease often has no early signs or symptoms.
