Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Fwd: Wormhole

'Although we have a pretty good idea that our galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its core, there could be another — albeit rather exotic — explanation for our observations of Sagittarius A*. It might be a wormhole.

 

This is according to two researchers who explore the possibility in a new paper submitted to the arXiv pre-print service. Although their work is purely theoretical, Zilong Li and Cosimo Bambi of Fudan University in Shanghai have identified a specific emission signature surrounding their hypothetical wormhole, a signature that may be detected by a sophisticated instrument that will soon be attached to one of the world's most powerful telescopes.

 

ANALYSIS: Wormhole Time Travel 'Possible' (If You're a Photon)

 

Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*) is a region in the Milky Way's core that generates powerful radio waves and astronomers have long suspected that it is the location of a black hole approximately 4 million times the mass of our sun. It wasn't until astronomers were able to track stars orbiting close to the suspected black hole's event horizon, however, that the supermassive black hole was confirmed to be there.

 

But supermassive black holes are a conundrum.

 

Now we know what signature our supermassive black hole generates, astronomers have discovered that the majority of other galaxies also possess supermassive black holes in their cores. Even when looking into the furthest cosmological distances at the youngest known galaxies, they also appear to host these black hole behemoths.'

 

http://news.discovery.com/space/galaxies/is-our-galaxys-monster-black-hole-a-wormhole-140527.htm

 

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Fwd: Health


'In a strategy that combines two of the hottest ideas in cancer research, scientists at the National Institutes of Health said they successfully attacked a woman's disease by using her immune system to home in on genetic mutations unique to her tumors.

 

The findings, published Thursday by the journal Science, come from just one patient—a 45-year-old woman in Montana. But researchers said her case, in which she received billions of immune cells specially grown to target her tumors, amounts to evidence the technique may be a way to treat many common cancers now considered difficult to target with the immune system.

 

So-called immunotherapy has so far shown the most promise in relatively rare cancers such as melanoma and kidney cancers.

 

This new approach "represents the blueprint for making immunotherapy available to treat common cancers," said Steven A. Rosenberg, chief of the Surgery Branch at the National Cancer Institute's Center for Cancer Research and senior author of the study. "We've figured out a way to target what is absolutely unique on each cancer. That is the mutations that make the cancer a cancer."'

 

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303701304579550101737391142?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303701304579550101737391142.html

 

'Researchers have discovered a natural molecule that could be used to treat insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The molecule, a derivative of omega-3 fatty acids, mimics some of the effects of physical exercise on blood glucose regulation.'

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140512112547.htm