#54 CLOVES Syndrom, Turtles and Stephen Hawking
Discover 3 science news from the latest 24 hours in our #PeerusWhatsNew, now on Medium.
1 A drug tested in the treatment of cancer seems effective on patients suffering from a genetic disease, the CLOVES syndrome.
A drug tested in oncology is effective in reducing the symptoms of this very debilitating disease. The treatment was tested on 19 people. “Very quickly we saw that it worked,” explained Dr. Canaud. Patients seems to be unanimous: “they felt much less pain, they felt that something was happening”.
The experimental treatment consisted of taking one tablet of BYL719 (Novartis) daily. The treatment has two major advantages: it is very simple (one tablet in the morning) and no significant side effect, for now.
2 A new species of turtle, reported for about twenty years, has been discovered in Mexico.
People have been alerting scientists for its existence for years, but it was only in May that this turtle living in western Mexico was recognized as a new species. Kinosternon vogti has a yellow spot on the tip of its nose and is more agile than its congeners. She lives in streams or rivers near the seaside town of Puerto Vallarta, on the Pacific coast.
Only nine specimens could be studied, including four live (three males and one female) and five dead discoveries. The few specimens still found alive make this turtle a species at high risk of extinction.
3During the funeral ceremony of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, a recording of his voice was sent to space.
This six-minute recording, featuring the synthesized voice of the scientist embedded in a composition of the Greek musician Vangelis, was sent to the nearest black hole 1A 0620–00 from a satellite dish of the European Space Agency (ESA) located near Madrid.
“It’s a beautiful gesture, symbolic, that creates a link between our father’s presence on this planet, his wish to go into space and his exploration of the universe,” said his daughter, Lucy Hawking.
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