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Gizmorama - December 21, 2015
Good Morning,
Researchers may have found a way to prolong survival in those suffering from brain tumor in the way of a special type of electromagnetic field.
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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*-- Electromagnetic field therapy may improve brain tumor survival --*
ZURICH, Switzerland - Researchers found a type of electromagnetic field can prolong survival in brain tumor patients who have already been treated with chemotherapy, according to a new study.
Tumor-treating fields -- low-intensity, intermediate-frequency alternating electric fields delivered with transducer arrays applied to a patient's shaved scalp -- have previously demonstrated an anti-tumor effect in background studies, leading researchers at the University of Zurich to test the treatment with glioblastoma patients.
Glioblastoma is a fast-growing tumor affecting the brain or nervous system that is difficult to treat, with most patients dying within a year or two of diagnosis. According to researchers, all attempts at improving outcomes for patients in large clinical trials have failed, leading them to test the combination treatment in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Early trials by a company that markets a TTFields device, Novocure Ltd., showed promise, leading researchers to test it with patients, Dr. John Sampson, a researchers at Duke University, wrote in an editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association with the study.
Doctors at 83 medical centers in Europe, Canada, Israel, South Korea and the United States worked with researchers at the University of Zurich to recruit 695 glioblastoma patients, treating 466 with TTFields and the chemotherapy temozolomide and 229 with temozolomide alone.
Patients who received TTFields were exposed to them for about 18 hours per day using four transducer arrays placed on their scalp and Novocure's portable device. All of the participants received temozolomide for 5 days in each 28-day treatment cycle.
Ending the trial based on results from an interim analysis, median progression-free survival was 7.1 months in the group receiving TTFields, as opposed to four months in the group receiving only temozolomide.
"Given the survival benefit reported in this study, it should now be a priority to understand the scientific basis for the efficacy of TTFields," Sampson wrote. "Achieving this may require the development of robust and widely available large animal models for glioblastoma, which do not currently exist."
*-- Study: Many exoplanets may be hiding water in their clouds --*
EXETER, England - A new survey of exoplanets called hot-Jupiters -- gas giants resembling Jupiter, only hotter -- suggests they aren't as dry as previously thought.
Examining faraway worlds in detail is quite difficult. Astronomers are forced to intuit information about an exoplanet's composition and atmosphere by analyzing the way the light from its host star is scattered as the planet travels across its face.
This analysis has previously shown hot-Jupiters to relatively dry, much drier than expected. The findings run counter to the models explaining the evolution of our own early solar system, where water was relatively abundant.
But a new look at exoplanet data from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes suggests water may be simply hiding in the thick clouds that surround many hot-Jupiters.
The findings were published this week in the journal Nature.
Studying the signatures of scattered solar energy left by passing exoplanets isn't easy, especially when the planets are so close to their host suns. But in combining observations from Hubble and Spitzer, astronomers gained a more accurate picture of each exoplanet and their atmospheres.
"I'm really excited to finally 'see' this wide group of planets together, as this is the first time we've had sufficient wavelength coverage to be able to compare multiple features from one planet to another," lead study author David Sing, an astronomer at the University of Exeter, said in a press release. "We found the planetary atmospheres to be much more diverse than we expected."
Among the diversity, Sing and his colleagues found a correlation between exoplanets and hazy clouds. While exoplanets without clouds tended to boast water signatures, those with little evidence of water tended to host hazy atmospheres.
"The alternative to this is that planets form in an environment deprived of water -- but this would require us to completely rethink our current theories of how planets are born," said co-author Jonathan Fortney, a researcher with the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Our results have ruled out the dry scenario, and strongly suggest that it's simply clouds hiding the water from prying eyes."
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