December 17, 2018

Good Morning,

There's a new place to take selfies...Mars! NASA's InSight lander has taken its very first selfie on the Red Planet. Kinda cool, right?

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- InSight lander snaps its first selfie from the surface of Mars --*

NASA's InSight lander took its first selfie this week.

InSight doesn't have a selfie stick, but the lander doesn't boast a robotic arm. Since it first landed late last month, InSight has been using the camera attached to its robotic arm to survey the surrounding terrain.

This week, NASA scientists stitched together 12 images to build a mosaic selfie.

While InSight is the star of the latest selfie, scientists are most interested in characteristics of the Red Planet's surface. Survey images suggest mission scientists chose the correct landing spot on Mars' Elysium Planitia.

"The near-absence of rocks, hills and holes means it'll be extremely safe for our instruments," Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a news release. "This might seem like a pretty plain piece of ground if it weren't on Mars, but we're glad to see that."

Last week, an InSight image showed the probe's flexed arm, poised to deploy its instruments. In the coming weeks, both its seismometer and heat probe will be positioned on Mars' surface.

The smooth flat surface where InSight landed will allow the seismometer to be placed flush against the Martian surface. The instrument's deployment will mark the first time a seismometer has been placed directly on the surface of Mars. For two years, InSight will stay perfectly still while the domed instrument listens to the seismic waves traveling through Mars.

The patterns of different seismic waves can reveal details about Mars' insides. Scientists hope these patterns will help them better understand Mars' inner structures and composition, as well as offer insights into the Red Planet's origins and evolution.

The sandy composition of the crater floor where InSight is positioned will also allow for easier deployment of the 16-foot heat probe. Hammering through fine sediment is less strenuous than layers of rock.

*-- A new spray could fight cancer recurrence after tumor removals --*

A new immune-boosting spray could stop recurrence of cancer in patients, a study says.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, detailed how researchers sprayed the surgical sites of mice with advanced melanoma tumors with calcium carbonate.

The gel decreased the growth of the tumor cells following surgery, and the mice survived at least 60 days without their tumors regrowing, researchers report.

"This sprayable gel shows promise against one of the greatest obstacles in curing cancer," Zhen Gu, a professor of bioengineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and study author, said in a news statement.

"One of the trademarks of cancers is that it spreads. In fact, around 90 percent of people with cancerous tumors end up dying because of tumor recurrence or metastasis. Being able to develop something that helps lower this risk for this to occur and has low toxicity is especially gratifying," Gu said.

The spray is made of calcium carbonate, which makes up eggshells and if found in rocks, blocked the CD47 protein in cancer that sends out signals that ward off the body's immune system.

According to the researchers, calcium carbonate can gradually dissolve in surgical wound sites and activate certain types of macrophage, which help push foreign objects out of the body.

Now, the team wants to put the spray through more trials and hopefully get it approved for use on humans. Ultimately, the researchers want to see the spray used on surgical sites by surgeons right after a tumor removal.

"We also learned that the gel could activate T cells in the immune system to get them to work together as another line of attack against lingering cancer cells," said Qian Chen, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA.

The researchers plan to keep testing the gel with animals to find an optimal dose and best mix for the gel before mounting tests in humans.


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