Europe
Berlin, Germany: Patients with soft-tissue sarcomas at high risk of spreading were 30% more likely to be alive and cancer free almost three years after starting treatment if their tumours were heated at the time they received chemotherapy, according to new research. The finding bolsters the case for intensifying exploration of the strategy in other types of cancer.
Berlin, Germany: Cancer research is too focused on new drug development, while not enough money and effort is being devoted to pursuing important advances in knowledge likely to have the biggest impact on combating the disease in the next few decades, a leading research policy expert says, adding that a major shift in research priorities will be crucial to the ability to cope with the coming wa
September 22, 2009 -- Mathematicians from North America, Europe, Australia, and South America have resolved the first one trillion cases of an ancient mathematics problem. The advance was made possible by a clever technique for multiplying large numbers. The numbers involved are so enormous that if their digits were written out by hand they would stretch to the moon and back.
Public smoking bans appear to significantly reduce the risk of heart attacks, particularly among younger individuals and nonsmokers, according to a new study published in the September 29, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Researchers find that smoking bans can reduce the number of heart attacks by as much as 26 percent per year.
Berlin, Germany: Patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who are given cetuximab (Erbitux) in addition to chemotherapy are 13% less likely to die than those who receive chemotherapy alone, regardless of which chemotherapy drug cocktail is used, new research finds. They also experience slower disease progression and an increased chance of tumour shrinkage.
Berlin, Germany: Whole-brain radiotherapy should not be given routinely to all patients whose cancer has spread to the brain, say researchers who found that using it after surgery or radiosurgery in patients with a limited number of brain metastases and stable cancer in the rest of the body did not extend lives or help patients remain functionally independent for longer.
Berlin, Germany: The largest study in the world of treatments for post menopausal, hormone positive breast cancer has shown that patients who continue to take exemestane or tamoxifen do significantly better than patients who start to take one or other drug (or tamoxifen followed exemestane) but then stop.
Berlin, Germany: New research has found that switching post-menopausal women with early breast cancer to the drug exemestane (Aromasin) after two or three years of tamoxifen rather than keeping them on tamoxifen for five years improves the chance of remaining cancer free and reduces the risk of death for at least the next six years.
One year after passing smoking bans, communities in North America and Europe had 17 percent fewer heart attacks compared to communities without smoking restrictions, and the number of heart attacks kept decreasing with time, according to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Critical care experts at Johns Hopkins are reporting initial success in boosting recovery and combating muscle wasting among critically ill, mostly bed-bound patients using any one of a trio of mild physical therapy exercises during their stays in the intensive care unit (ICU).
(Santa Barbara, California) -- New technologies may change our lives for the better, but sometimes they have risks. Communicating those benefits and risks to the public, and developing regulations to deal with them, can be difficult -- particularly if there's already public opposition to the technology.
Scientists have found the "Rosetta Stone" of supervolcanoes, those giant pockmarks in the Earth's surface produced by rare and massive explosive eruptions that rank among nature's most violent events. The eruptions produce devastation on a regional scale -- and possibly trigger climatic and environmental effects at a global scale.
This 34 by 20-degree wide image provides us with a view as experienced by amateur astronomers around the world. However, its incredible beauty and appeal owe much to the quality of the observing site and the skills of Stéphane Guisard, the world-renowned astrophotographer, who is also an ESO engineer.
Berlin, Germany: Promising results from two new blood tests that can aid in the early identification of patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancers will be presented at Europe's largest cancer congress, ECCO 15 -- ESMO 34 [1], in Berlin today (Monday September 21).
The Arab world is not the socioeconomic basket case that conventional wisdom holds, says University of California, San Diego economist James Rauch.
