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Helping Patients Navigate New Cancer Drugs

As cancer treatment in pill form transforms how care is delivered, a new Michigan State University study underscores the challenges patients face in administering their own chemotherapy outside the supervised environment of a cancer clinic.

Chemotherapy pills can target specific cancers better than some traditional intravenous drugs, said Sandra Spoelstra, the MSU assistant professor of nursing who led the study. But they also can be difficult for patients to take. (more…)

The Supernova That Cried Wolf

Science

A luminous supernova in a galaxy 67 million light years away from us has finally exploded for good, a UA-led team of astronomers has discovered. This event sheds light on how massive stars end their lives.

Astronomers have announced that a massive star, which they have watched repeatedly mimic a supernova since 2009, has finally exploded for real. (more…)

Recognizing Psychological Common Ground Could Ease Tensions Among Those with Different Religious Beliefs, says MU Psychologist

Culture

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Understanding how thoughts of mortality influence individuals’ beliefs sheds light on the commonalities among different groups’ motivations and could help ease tensions between opposing viewpoints, according to University of Missouri experiments that tested the relationship between awareness of death and belief in a higher power. The study found that thoughts of death increased atheists, Christians, Muslims and agnostics conviction in their own world views. For example, contrary to the wartime aphorism that there are no atheists in foxholes, thoughts of death did not cause atheists to express belief in a deity.

“Our study suggests that atheists’ and religious believers’ world views have the same practical goal,” said Kenneth Vail, lead author and doctoral student in psychological science in MU’s College of Arts and Science. “Both groups seek a coherent world view to manage the fear of death and link themselves to a greater and immortal entity, such as a supreme being, scientific progress or a nation. If people were more aware of this psychological similarity, perhaps there might be more understanding and less conflict among groups with different beliefs.” (more…)

New Qubit Control Bodes Well for Future of Quantum Computing

Science

Yale University scientists have found a way to observe quantum information while preserving its integrity, an achievement that offers researchers greater control in the volatile realm of quantum mechanics and greatly improves the prospects of quantum computing.

Quantum computers would be exponentially faster than the most powerful computers of today. (more…)

Spear Phishing: Researchers Work to Counter Email Attacks that Gain Recipients’ Trust

Technology

The email resembled the organization’s own employee e-newsletter and asked recipients to visit a website to confirm that they wanted to continue receiving the newsletter. Another email carried an attachment that said it contained the marketing plan the recipient had requested at a recent conference. A third email bearing a colleague’s name suggested a useful website to visit.

None of these emails were what they pretended to be. The first directed victims to a website that asked for personal information, including the user’s password. The second included a virus that launched when the “marketing plan” was opened. The third directed users to a website that attempted to install a malicious program. (more…)

New Path to More Efficient Organic Solar Cells Uncovered at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source

Environment

Why are efficient and affordable solar cells so highly coveted? Volume. The amount of solar energy lighting up Earth’s land mass every year is nearly 3,000 times the total amount of annual human energy use. But to compete with energy from fossil fuels, photovoltaic devices must convert sunlight to electricity with a certain measure of efficiency. For polymer-based organic photovoltaic cells, which are far less expensive to manufacture than silicon-based solar cells, scientists have long believed that the key to high efficiencies rests in the purity of the polymer/organic cell’s two domains – acceptor and donor. Now, however, an alternate and possibly easier route forward has been shown.

Working at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), a premier source of X-ray and ultraviolet light beams for research, an international team of scientists found that for highly efficient polymer/organic photovoltaic cells, size matters. (more…)

Virus Caught in the Act of Infecting a Cell

Health, Science

About the video: watch an animation showing the changes in the structure of a T7 virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium.

AUSTIN, Texas — The detailed changes in the structure of a virus as it infects an E. coli bacterium have been observed for the first time, report researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT Health) Medical School this week in Science Express. (more…)

Multiple Sclerosis Study Reveals How Killer T Cells Learn to Recognize Nerve Fiber Insulators

Health

Misguided killer T cells may be the missing link in sustained tissue damage in the brains and spines of people with multiple sclerosis, findings from the University of Washington reveal. Cytoxic T cells, also known as CD8+ T cells, are white blood cells that normally are in the body’s arsenal to fight disease.

Multiple sclerosis is characterized by inflamed lesions that damage the insulation surrounding nerve fibers and destroy the axons, electrical impulse conductors that look like long, branching projections. Affected nerves fail to transmit signals effectively. (more…)