Could the destroyer of wrinkles also work on cancer? Gastric cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the world and can be hard to treat. Chemotherapy is often not enough to stop tumour growth, but it seems that botox injections could help.

One method for treating stomach cancer is to sever the branches of the vagus nerve that innervate the stomach, a procedure known as a vagotomy. That’s because the nervous system influences how certain cells behave, in some cases encouraging tumour growth But a vagotomy is a very invasive procedure.

Timothy Wang of Columbia University, New York, and his colleagues wondered whether the same effect could be achieved with a drug.

Lethal toxin

One way nerves are thought to stimulate cancer is through the release of signalling chemicals. To prevent nerve fibres from doing this, Wang’s team used botox, the lethal botulinum toxin produced by the bacterium, which is sometimes injected to prevent wrinkles. Botox enters the nerve cells and prevents them from releasing the signalling chemicals that can influence tumour growth.

The team injected botox into mice with gastric cancer and compared their tumour growth with that in mice that had received a vagotomy. They found that the botox was as effective at limiting tumour growth as surgery when used in early stages of the disease.

For advanced gastric cancer, botox cannot reduce the size of tumours that have already developed. It can, however, stop new growths from increasing in size, so the team tried combining botox treatment with chemotherapy. While botox and chemotherapy on their own had a small effect on new tumours, mice that received both treatments had tumours that were about half the size of those that received no treatment at all.

Prolonged survival

“In a patient with an advanced stage disease that you don’t want to do surgery on, you could use botox in combination with chemotherapy. The injections may help control the growth of further tumours, and allow for prolonged survival,” says Wang.

This new research offers a novel treatment for gastric cancer, of the University of Southern California’s Norris Comprehensive Cancer. “Unfortunately, gastric cancer is not particularly sensitive to chemotherapy,” he says. He suggests that combining it with botox treatments could be an effective approach.

Wang’s team next plans to test the use of botox in advanced gastric cancer patients who have shown resistance to chemotherapy.

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(Image: The Yomiuri Shimbun via AP/PA)

Rescue workers are searching for survivors in debris left by a landslide that hit Hiroshima, Japan, on Wednesday. People are still missing under the collapsed buildings, mud and rock that litter the base of the mountain on the outskirts of the city.

According to Hiroshima police, at least 39 people have been killed in the landslide, and 52 more are still missing. The slide was triggered by a sudden deluge: a month’s worth of rain fell in 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday morning, causing whole hillsides to collapse.

One of those killed was a 53-year-old firefighter, Noriyoshi Masaoka, who died rescuing five people.

Around 3000 rescue personnel are working in the area, although further heavy rain halted search efforts on Thursday evening. There are now fears of a fresh collapse, with rain due to continue through to Saturday evening and the surrounding mountains becoming “misshapen”, .

, fearing further landsides and floods. According to Fuji TV, 1100 residents have been unable to return to their homes and are sleeping in local schools.

It’s the strangest sweet tooth in the world. Birds lost the ability to taste sugars, but nectar-feeding hummingbirds re-evolved the capacity by repurposing receptors used to taste savoury food.

To differentiate between tastes, receptors on the surface of taste buds on the tongue, known as T1Rs, bind to molecules in certain foods, triggering a neurological response.

In vertebrates such as humans, a pair of these receptors – T1R2 and T1R3 – work together to deliver the sweet kick we experience from sugar. But at Harvard University and her colleagues found that birds don’t have the genes that code for T1R2. They are found in lizards, though, suggesting that they were lost at some point during the evolution of birds or the dinosaurs they evolved from.

But hummingbirds clearly can detect sugar: not only do they regularly sup on nectar, taste tests show they prefer sweet tasting foods over blander options. Now Baldwin and her team have worked out why: another pair of receptors – T1R1 and T1R3 – work together to detect sugar.

Savoury to sweet

Other vertebrates use T1R1 to taste savoury foods. It seems that in hummingbirds the proteins on the surface of the two receptors have been modified so that they respond to sugars instead.

“The change in the taste receptor was certainly not the only factor or aspect of hummingbird biology that was important [for them to feed on nectar], but it seems like it played an important role,” says Baldwin. “There are many behavioural and physiological changes that have occurred between hummingbirds and their ancestors: small body size, a long bill and changes in the wing which allowed them to hover.”

“We know a lot about bird vision and smell, but until recently very little was known about the genetic basis of taste in any bird species,” says at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the study. “These findings should help researchers test sweet perception in other birds that eat fruit and nectar. The question for me is whether other nectar eating birds and frugivores have evolved this same capacity.”

The re-evolution of sugar receptors may have happened multiple times, says study member , also at Harvard. “It will be exciting to see how other nectar feeding birds taste sugar, to compare whether evolution used the same or different strategies to solve the problem of sugar detection,” he says.

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(Image: NASA Langley/David C. Bowman)

The movie Grease ends with the car Greased Lightning magically flying off into the sky. This must have been bugging someone at NASA – the agency has named this weird aircraft after John Travolta’s ride.

Publicly, though, it says the name refers to the drone’s two-step propulsion system: diesel engines inside the fuselage that can run off fuel derived from fryer oil (grease) and which generate electricity (lightning) that powers 10 propellers.

The propellers festoon the wings and tail of the 3-metre-wingspan . For take-off and landing, the wings and tail point upwards and all 10 propellers spin to allow the drone to hover. Once airborne, however, the wings and tail pivot to horizontal and the two outer propellers on the wings drive the GL-10 forwards.

Engineers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, recently . Free-flight tests are scheduled for later this year, and it may only be a short while before these hybrid aircraft are let loose in the sky. Unfortunately for Travolta, however, this Greased Lightning doesn’t have a pilot’s seat.

Using electricity or biofuels should hopefully reduce the carbon cost of flying, something that NASA is keen to achieve.

Need something to propel your interest further? Follow the links to find out how copter-planes have soared through the skies in the past, although some have been more successful than others.

of Colorado State University in Fort Collins and his colleagues studied elephant carcasses from Samburu National Reserve in Kenya to determine cause of death, then combined this information with records of elephant poaching across Africa.

They found that since 2009, up to 40,000 elephants – 8 per cent of the total – have been illegally killed each year, and the population has shrunk by up to 3 per cent annually.

“This poaching spike is due to rising demand for ivory from Asia,” says Richard Thomas of in Cambridge, UK. Thanks to rising wealth, “people are now able to afford ivory, which has long been desired as a status symbol. Deterrents need to be put in place to drive home that wildlife poaching is a serious crime.”

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This article will appear in print under the headline “Elephant alert”

Your enemy’s enemy could be your friend. Disease-causing bacteria in soil could become an anti-cancer therapy. The microbes shrink tumours in dogs – and seem able to do it in humans too.

Clostridium novyi bacteria thrive in oxygen-poor conditions, where the enzymes they release can puncture and kill mammalian cells. of BioMed Valley Discoveries in Kansas City, Missouri, and his colleagues wondered whether they could use the bacteria to selectively kill mammalian cells within cancerous tumours, which often have a poor blood, and thus oxygen, supply.

The team genetically modified °ä.ÌęČԎDZčČ⟱ bacteria into a form that wouldn’t pose a serious health risk, and injected them into the tumours of 16 dogs. Three weeks later, the tumours had shrunk or disappeared in nine of the dogs.

The group has now also tested the bacteria on a 53-year-old woman with tumours in her liver, lungs and the soft tissue in her right shoulder that didn’t respond to standard treatment. They injected the bacteria into the tumour in her shoulder. One month later, it had shrunk.

Symptoms of infection

The bacteria left healthy, oxygen-rich tissue around the tumour intact. In fact, under a microscope, the researchers could see a precise border between the bacterially infected tumour cells and the non-cancerous healthy cells.

The bacteria did induce symptoms commonly seen in bacterial infection, such as fever and nausea, but these were controlled by antibiotics after the tumour size reduced.

“This is the first study to look at the eradication of tumours in humans using bacteria, and the results were promising,” says Saha.

“This is an elegant study,” says Vikas Sukhatme at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. It could work well on localised tumours, he says – but more research may be needed to demonstrate that the approach can work against cancers that have metastasised.

Saha stresses that the bacteria are not a silver bullet to treat cancer, but used in conjunction with other therapies they may provide another tool in our anticancer armoury. The method is drastically different to conventional chemotherapies, radiation therapies and even personalised cancer treatments, Saha says.

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(Image: M.R. Smith/Smithsonian Institute)

In life this weird-looking fossil was a creature like a worm, although the spines, head and legs might suggest otherwise.

It belongs to a group of animals that roamed the ocean floor over 505 million years ago, during the Cambrian explosion of life. The palaeontologist identified the genus among fossils found in the in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, and thought it looked so strange that he named it . That was in 1977, but until now no one has been sure just how to classify Hallucigenia in relation to modern animals.

Now a team at the University of Cambridge has been able to link Hallucigenia to modern-day velvet worms, a small group of animals also known as , which live in tropical forests.

So what did Hallucigenia look like when it was alive? Quite small – between 5 and 35 millimetres in length – but nevertheless it probably looked rather formidable, with ridged spines along its back and seven or eight pairs of clawed legs.

When the team looked closely at the claws, they realised that they were built like the jaws of velvet worms – which were already known to be modified legs.

“The peculiar claws of Hallucigenia are a smoking gun, and may even help to decipher other problematic Cambrian critters,” said , lead author of the research paper. “By deciphering ‘in-between’ fossils like Hallucigenia, we can determine how different animal groups built up their modern body plans.”

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(Image: WENN Ltd/Alamy)

What is whiter than white? These beetles, apparently – because their scales make them whiter than paper. No human technology can match their brilliance using such thin material.

The scales of the Cyphochilus (pictured above) and Lepidiota stigma beetles, which are native to South-East Asia, contain tight, complex networks of chitin filaments (see image below). Chitin is a substance with a similar molecular structure to cellulose, and it builds the cell walls of fungi and the shells of crustaceans as well as insect exoskeletons.

On their own, the chitin filaments reflect light poorly. But researchers at the University of Cambridge and the European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy in Florence, Italy, have found that the geometry of a filament network makes the whole thing reflect light extremely efficiently. It reflects light of all colours anisotropically, meaning that it bounces the light in one direction only. That makes the beetles’ scales appear bright white.

(Image: Lorenzo Cortese)

“These scales have a structure that is truly complex, since it gives rise to something that is more than the sum of its parts,” said team member Matteo Burresi of the Italian National Institute of Optics in Florence. “A randomly packed collection of its constituent elements by itself is not sufficient to achieve the degree of brightness that we observe.”

What sets the brilliant beetles apart from artificial reflectors, though, is that the scales are ultra-thin. Their individual chitin filaments are just a few thousandths of a millimetre thick, minimising weight and so reducing the energy the beetles need to fly. It may not be too long before these beetles are inspiring a host of new materials that will be whiter than white too.

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(Image: National Park Service)

This ferocious feline isn’t stalking the savannah, as you might expect: it’s prowling Malibu Creek State Park, a stone’s throw from Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the Route 101 highway has isolated the local population of mountain lions from others of their kind, and they are inbreeding.

Some are even killing offspring, siblings and mates, behaviour that is rarely seen when mountain lions can move freely between populations.

However, this mother, photographed by a remote camera, seems to be remaining loyal to the two 10-month old kittens she was sharing a mule deer with.

The last known immigration of an outside mountain lion into this isolated population occurred in 2009. The adventurous male involved did manage to bolster the genetic diversity somewhat, giving hope that it wouldn’t take too many more incomers to restore a healthy diversity.

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Help is arriving for the Yazidi. The UK government has released ÂŁ8 million to provide aid across central and northern Iraq to those fleeing the advances of the Islamist group now known as the Islamic State. Of this ÂŁ2 million was spent on air-dropping emergency supplies across the , where up to 40,000 Yazidi people are taking refuge after being driven from their homes in northern Iraq.

The first packages were dropped from Royal Air Force aircraft on Saturday night. Air drops on Sunday were aborted as not enough information was available on the whereabouts of the refugees, leading to fears that the crates could have injured people. Tornado jets are now to be used to provide greater surveillance.

“Air-dropping is the most expensive way to deliver resources, so is considered a last resort,” says Mike Goodhand, head of international logistics at the British Red Cross. “What are delivered are the lifesaving, essential resources, like foodstuffs and clean water provisions.”

The packages included 1200 – water filtration devices able to remove viruses, parasites and bacteria.

They work quickly: one cube can filter a litre of water in around 80 seconds, and is able to hold up to 5 litres at a time. They were distributed already containing water, although they are reusable. Each cube can filter up to 5000 litres.

“They are able to fold in on themselves and take up very little room and weight. It is a very simple filtering mechanism that allows for any water source to be passed through that takes out any dangerous pathogens,” Goodhand says.

“We try to get people access to at least 5 litres per person per day, so in under 10 minutes these jerrycans can provide enough water for drinking and cooking.”

The Lifesaver cubes will also help the survivors once they finally get off the mountain.

Also in the dropped packages were 240 solar lanterns. These are a combined portable light source and phone charger that is dust and water-resistant. A day of charging can power the light for more than 15 hours and a phone for 2 hours.

The packages were arranged by the UK government’s (DFID), in conjunction with the US government, which is providing food in the form of “MREs” (meals ready to eat). These are precooked, bagged food rations usually used by the US military while in the field, and provides around 1200 calories each. They have a shelf life of up to three and a half years at 27 °C , and are able to withstand parachute drops from 380 metres.

The US has also dropped more than 250,000 litres of water from cargo planes.

“We are working to step up these deliveries in the coming days with our UN partners whilst continuing to work with the US, Kurds, Turks and other international partners to get those trapped on the mountain to safety,” a spokesperson for the DFID told żìĂš¶ÌÊÓÆ”.

The Yazidi, a religious minority in Kurdish Iraq, fled as the Islamic State spread across the region in recent weeks. They were helped by , but so far only 4000 have crossed the Iraq border, according to reports from International Rescue Committee (IRC), which is providing assistance to people reaching Syria. “Those arriving are extremely dehydrated, and some had war wounds,” says the IRC’s Paul Donohoe.

Goodhand said it was impossible to tell what would happen next for these people. “What we know is that their needs are very specific and very dire. If and when those people can get off the mountains into populated areas, they will have very different needs. People don’t want charity. They want back a degree of self-sufficiency. We look to provide the means to restore their livelihood and ensure they don’t have to rely on charity.”