Japan's National Cancer Institute running clinical trials for a new form of radiation therapy

Particle-accelerator-based boron-neutron capture therapy (BNCT), a new form of radiation therapy that promises to be more effective at eliminating certain tumors, has begun clinical trails in Japan.

Many forms of cancer are quite difficult to treat with current modalities, the dreaded glioblastoma multiforme (a particularly deadly form of brain tumor) comes to mind. It's shown nearly complete resistence to all the conventional, and some less common, treatment methods; The 5-year survival rate for someone diagnosed with a GBM sits at less than 5%. But thanks to a new form of radiation treatment being tested in Japan by the National Cancer Institute, patients with tumors like GBMs may soon see a huge improvement in survival.  

What Happened Before the Big Bang? ... A Big Bang!

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

Image Credit: NASA/ WMAP team.

According to some shocking new findings, scientists may be one step closer to figuring out what happened before the big bang!

The current evidence states that the Big Bang that occurred 13.7 billion years ago gave rise to a universe that is constantly expanding, cooling, growing. As it does this it loses energy; at one point it will have lost all its energy resulting in a permanently cold and energy-less universe: a heat death.

Antimatter Successfully Trapped At CERN.

Scientists at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) have succesfully trapped an antihydrogen atom.

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

Image Credit: False colour image of Omega Nebula. NASA, ESA & J. Hester(ASU).

The successful trapping of an antihydrogen atom by physicists at CERN has been published in an advance letter to Nature journal. Scientists have known about antimatter for quite some time, and CERN has been studying it since 2002. Using a magnetic trap (an array of magnets), they were able to successfully contain an antihydrogen atom for fractions of a second. The implications for theoretical physics are vast, and more work needs to be done to fully understand this form of matter that was around at the big bang. But just exactly what is this stuff and what does it explain?