Here’s today’s stories from the physics congress in Melbourne.
Good Aussie home wanted for gravitational wave detector
The physics of money – testing the stability of the system
Superconductors reveal their secrets
First results from the ATLAS experiment
Sun sneaks up on winter workers
Watching electrons in action
Laser beams on steroids
Light rays treat tumours
Contact [continue reading…]
A cubic kilometre of South Pole ice looking for dark matter
From the chaos of stirring coffee to stirring rocks and cleaning up polluted ground water
Silk microchips for instant blood tests
Diamond’s light touch
Enlightenment on a chip
A single electron reader for silicon quantum computing
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This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about using your beach towel to charge your MP3 player; carrying brains overseas; flu vaccinations; healthy fruit extracts; and more… [continue reading…]
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about artificial skin; the optical illusions of bowerbirds; tractor beams; earthquakes; and more [continue reading…]
Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research Most women in Australia who have breast cancer recover. But many then relapse years later. Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat wants to know why. If she can solve this mystery, her work will open up opportunities for new drugs and treatments. Her achievements to date suggest that she […]
A compound produced by a pregnant lizard may provide important information on the origins and treatment of cancer in humans, according to zoologist Bridget Murphy from the University of Sydney, who discovered the protein, which is pivotal to the development of the lizard placenta.
“Our egg-laying ancestors probably never got cancer, but things changed when we started having live young. Embryos need an extensive network of blood vessels to allow them to grow. So do tumours. I found that the three-toed skink, which gives birth to live young, uses a particularly powerful protein to encourage the growth of blood vessels. The only other place where this protein has been found is in pre-cancerous cells grown in the laboratory,” she says.
The placenta of the three toed skink is highly vascular (photo: Bridget Murphy)
Future research on unlocking the secrets of how the protein works might well provide the basis of new therapies for cancer, and to promote wound healing or the regeneration of blood vessels in patients with heart disease. Bridget’s work is being presented for the first time in public through Fresh Science, a communication boot camp for early career scientists held at the Melbourne Museum. She was one of 16 winners from across Australia.
A shoulder-joint implant, with the ball and socket on the opposite bones from nature, can significantly improve the quality of life of patients with severe arthritis and tendon tears, says medical engineer David Ackland from the University of Melbourne.
In a search for a more effective replacement joint, David and his colleagues looked at the counterintuitive ‘reverse’ implant, which was designed and manufactured in the US by Zimmer, Inc. Their tests on the Zimmer implant showed that it stabilises the joint and increases the range of movement of arthritic shoulders. His work is being presented for the first time in public through Fresh Science, a communication boot camp for early career scientists held at the Melbourne Museum last week. David was one of 16 winners from across Australia.
Most people recover from whiplash injuries within the first few months. However some people have long term pain – lasting months or years. Until now there has been no way of diagnosing these more severe cases.
A team of Victorian researchers have discovered how to track if lung tumours respond during a course of treatment. Trials with five patients revealed that some tumours responded quickly to treatment while others continued to grow. A larger trial is now underway with twenty patients.
Sherry Wu in the lab. Credit: Sherry Wu
Researchers at The University of Queensland (UQ) have developed a way to deliver drugs which can specifically shut down cancer-causing genes in tumour cells while sparing normal healthy tissues.
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