Metal From Asteroid To Cure Cancer
Researchers have claimed that a metal from the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs can be used to target and destroy cancer cells. According to new research by an international collaboration between the University of Warwick and Sun Yat-Sen University in China, iridium — a rare metal delivered to Earth by the asteroid — can kill cancer without harming healthy cells. The team created a compound of iridium and organic materials and then introduced it into a lung cancer tumour grown in the lab. When red laser light is shone onto it through the skin, the compound is activated, converting the oxygen in the tumour into singlet oxygen, a poisonous form of the element that effectively kills the cancer cells from the inside. With cancer becoming resistant to certain treatments, it’s crucial to find new methods such as this. “The precious metal platinum is already used in more than 50 percent of cancer chemotherapies,” says Peter Sadler, lead author of the study.
Babies Able To Estimate Probabilities
Even babies can estimate the probability of an event, say scientists who suggest that our ability to analyse risks and benefits of any action begins to develop when we are just six months old. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Germany and the University of Uppsala in Sweden showed that six-month-old babies can estimate probabilities. The babies already succeed in determining which colour makes up the majority of the balls and therefore which one is more likely to be drawn. “Six months seems to be the minimum age at which infants start to deal with probability information,” said Ezgi Kayhan, neuroscientist at MPI CBS.
Drinking, pot can make you a loser!
Is your teenaged child addicted to alcohol and marijuanaIJ Beware, for not only does it affect health, but also makes one unsuccessful in life, a study warns. Teenagers downing over 10 beers in one night and high on pot were less likely to go to college, get full-time work or even get married, it said. The findings showed that dependence on alcohol and marijuana might affect young boys more severely. “This study found that chronic marijuana use in adolescence was negatively associated with achieving important developmental milestones in young adulthood,” said lead author Elizabeth Harari, psychiatrist from the University of Connecticut. Given the current move in the US toward marijuana legalisation, awareness of marijuana’s potentially deleterious effects will be important moving forward, Harari added.