The current treatments for bladder cancer are invasive for patients — who often must sit for hours at a time with a bladder full of an agent designed to kill cancer cells and tumors. Bladder cancer also is one of the most reoccurring for people diagnosed with the disease. Now, researchers at Purdue University have come up with a way to combine the anthrax toxin with a growth factor to kill bladder cancer cells and tumors....

A Life Cycle Assessment carried out by researchers on steviol glycosides extracted from stevia revealed that the production of this sweetener has a lower environmental impact in various areas when compared to sugar. The assessment highlighted that the use of stevia could potentially reduce land use and water consumption, while still providing the same level of sweetness as sugar. Many non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS), like steviol glycosides, can reproduce the taste of sugar, but without the associated health risks, such as tooth decay, obesity, or diabetes....

Senior authors Carlos Fernandez-Hernando and Yajaira Suárez and their colleagues had previously described the function of ANGPTL4 in immune cells, where it regulates lipid accumulation in the arteries and in the development of atherosclerosis (hardened arteries). In this follow-up study, to understand the contribution of this protein in controlling lipid and glucose balance throughout the body, the research team generated a novel mouse model lacking ANGPTL4 in fat, where it is normally present in high amounts....

The call follows an investigation by the journal, showing that several species of venomous and potentially lethal snakes, such as cobras, vipers, and rattlesnakes, can easily be bought through pet shops in England, but that the licensing arrangements for ownership are somewhat lax. What’s more, these reptiles are difficult for owners to manage properly at home, and few vets are sufficiently insured or have the relevant expertise to treat them, the investigation reveals....

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Spots Swirling, Gritty Clouds on Remote Planet Researchers observing with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed silicate cloud features in a distant planet’s atmosphere. The atmosphere is constantly rising, mixing, and moving during its 22-hour day, bringing hotter material up and pushing colder material down. The resulting brightness changes are so dramatic that it is the most variable planetary-mass object known to date. The team, led by Brittany Miles of the University of Arizona, also made extraordinarily clear detections of water, methane and carbon monoxide with Webb’s data, and found evidence of carbon dioxide....

The scientists presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union meeting earlier this fall. The findings indicate that it might even become necessary to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, with massive tree-planting efforts or machines of some kind. The combined stresses of acidification and warming waters, coupled with overfishing and coastal pollution, is taking their toll on coral reefs. Carbon emissions have already lowered the pH of the ocean by 0....

One of the most distant galaxies ever observed has provided astronomers with the first detection of dust in such a remote star-forming system and tantalizing evidence for the rapid evolution of galaxies after the Big Bang. The new observations have used ALMA to pick up the faint glow from cold dust in the galaxy A1689-zD1 and used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to measure its distance. A team of astronomers, led by Darach Watson from the University of Copenhagen, used the Very Large Telescope’s X-shooter instrument along with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe one of the youngest and most remote galaxies ever found....

According to research conducted in Dr. Michael Golding’s laboratory at Texas A&M University, male alcohol consumption has a detrimental impact on the success rates of in vitro fertilization (IVF), leading to increased financial costs and emotional strain for patients. The recently published study is a component of Dr. Golding’s research program, which aims to comprehend the role of male alcohol consumption before conception in the emergence of alcohol-related birth defects and illnesses....

Around 415 million people worldwide are estimated to be living with type 2 diabetes, which costs around $760 billion in annual global health expenditure. According to Diabetes UK, more than 4.9 million people have diabetes in the UK alone, of whom 90% have type 2 diabetes, and this is estimated to cost the NHS £10 billion per year. Type 2 diabetes causes levels of glucose – blood sugar – to become too high....

Aspirin use is associated with a 26% raised risk of heart failure in people with at least one predisposing factor for the condition. That’s the finding of a study published today (November 22, 2021) in ESC Heart Failure, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Predisposing factors included smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. “This is the first study to report that among individuals with a least one risk factor for heart failure, those taking aspirin were more likely to subsequently develop the condition than those not using the medication,” said study author Dr....

Observing the nebula with the largest telescope of the time, Lord Rosse in 1844 named the object the “Crab” because of its tentacle-like structure. But it wasn’t until the 1900s that astronomers realized the nebula was the surviving relic of the 1054 supernova, the explosion of a massive star. Now, astronomers and visualization specialists from NASA’s Universe of Learning program have combined the visible, infrared, and X-ray vision of NASA’s Great Observatories to create a three-dimensional representation of the dynamic Crab Nebula, the tattered remains of an exploded star....

NASA funded observations from the W. M. Keck Observatory with analysis led by the University of Leicester, England, tracked the “rain” of charged water particles into the atmosphere of Saturn and found the extent of the ring-rain is far greater, and falls across larger areas of the planet, than previously thought. The work reveals that the rain influences the composition and temperature structure of parts of Saturn’s upper atmosphere. The paper appears in this week’s issue of the journal Nature....

The findings were recently published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Ionized gas is the most widely distributed component of interstellar gas and a valuable tool for determining the abundance of elements. Radio recombination lines (RRLs) can avoid the difficulties of optical line observations, since RRLs are usually optically thin and have well-understood emission mechanisms. However, detected RRL emitters have nearly all been neutral atoms so far. Only two RRL transitions (121α and 115α) of helium ions in planetary nebulae have been previously reported....

The newly discovered asteroids can be found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and are similar to the dwarf planet Ceres – rich in water. Computer simulations suggest that these asteroids were moved into the current location in the asteroid belt shortly after their formation due to complex dynamic processes in the outer reaches of the Solar System. With an equatorial diameter of approximately 900 kilometers, the dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter....

A group of astronomers in Brazilian universities and research institutions observed a star demoted to white dwarf status because of companion. A group of Brazilian astronomers observed a pair of celestial objects rarely seen in the Milky Way: a very low-mass white dwarf and a brown dwarf. What makes this binary system so unique is its origin: the white dwarf’s existence was prematurely cut off by its companion, a brown dwarf, which caused its early death through “malnutrition” or loss of matter....

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful electromagnetic phenomenon observed in the universe, releasing as much energy in just a second or so as the sun will release over its entire lifetime. Though they were discovered in 1967, the mechanism behind this enormous release of energy long remained mysterious. Decades of studies finally revealed that long bursts–one of the types of bursts–originate from relativistic jets of matter ejected during the death of massive stars....

Mark Morris, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a member of the research team, discovered the structure, also called the radio arc, with a former student, Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, back in 1983, but they did not have such a complete and colorful image of it then. The new image shows the inner part of our galaxy, which houses the largest, densest collection of giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way....

The new the findings by a team of researchers led by Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, who observed falling rotation curves in six galaxies: the velocities of the stars decreased in the outer regions, indicates that there is no additional invisible mass. In addition, the star disks are thicker and more turbulent than those in today’s galaxies. Over the past few decades, many different studies of galaxies in the local universe have shown the existence and importance of so-called “dark matter”....

They have discovered an unusual ultra-massive white dwarf around 150 light-years from us with an atmospheric composition never seen before, the first time that a merged white dwarf has been identified using its atmospheric composition as a clue. The discovery, published today (March 2, 2020) in the journal Nature Astronomy, could raise new questions about the evolution of massive white dwarf stars and on the number of supernovae in our galaxy....

The heliosphere is a vast region, extending more than twice as far as Pluto. It casts a magnetic “force field” around all the planets, deflecting charged particles that would otherwise muscle into the solar system and even tear through DNA. However, the heliosphere, despite its name, is not actually a sphere. Space physicists have long compared its shape to a comet, with a round “nose” on one side and a long tail extending in the opposite direction....