Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO and longtime Google executive, has died at 56
Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said. She was 56.
Aug 11, 2024
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Other
Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said. She was 56.
Aug 11, 2024
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18
Computer Sciences
Cornell researchers have developed an optical neural network (ONN) that can filter relevant information from a scene before the visual image is detected by a camera, a method that may make it possible to build faster, smaller ...
Apr 27, 2023
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160
Robotics
Scientists have developed a tiny mechanical probe that can measure the inherent stiffness of cells and tissues as well as the internal forces the cells generate and exert on one another. Their new "magnetic microrobot" is ...
Jan 25, 2023
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120
Engineering
It's a hot topic, at least on social media: tiny plastic particles allegedly end up not only in oceans and lakes, but also in drinking water—and, yes, even in bottled mineral water. Eawag and the Zurich Water Works launched ...
May 31, 2022
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43
Robotics
Science fiction novelists couldn't have come up with a crazier plot: microrobots streaming through blood or through other body fluids that are driven by light, can carry drugs to cancer cells and drop off the medication on ...
Feb 2, 2022
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63
Machine learning & AI
Researchers at UCLA and NantWorks have developed an artificial intelligence-powered device that detects cancer cells in a few milliseconds—hundreds of times faster than previous methods. With that speed, the invention could ...
Aug 22, 2019
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838
Computer Sciences
What should personalized, precision treatment of cancer look like in the future? We know that people are different, their tumors are different, and they respond differently to different therapies. Medical teams of the future ...
Jul 25, 2019
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11
Engineering
Devising the best treatment for a patient with cancer requires doctors to know something about the traits of the cancer from which the patient is suffering. But one of the greatest difficulties in treating cancer is that ...
Apr 2, 2019
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74
Engineering
A new ultrasensitive diagnostic device invented by researchers at the University of Kansas, The University of Kansas Cancer Center and KU Medical Center could allow doctors to detect cancer quickly from a droplet of blood ...
Feb 25, 2019
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361
Robotics
A team of researchers at the City University of Hong Kong have found a way to use micro-robots to carry a cluster of cells to a target site in live animals. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group ...
Cancer (medical term: malignant neoplasm) is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth (division beyond the normal limits), invasion (intrusion on and destruction of adjacent tissues), and sometimes metastasis (spread to other locations in the body via lymph or blood). These three malignant properties of cancers differentiate them from benign tumors, which are self-limited, and do not invade or metastasize. Most cancers form a tumor but some, like leukemia, do not. The branch of medicine concerned with the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer is oncology.
Cancer may affect people at all ages, even fetuses, but the risk for most varieties increases with age. Cancer causes about 13% of all human deaths. According to the American Cancer Society, 7.6 million people died from cancer in the world during 2007. Cancers can affect all animals.
Nearly all cancers are caused by abnormalities in the genetic material of the transformed cells. These abnormalities may be due to the effects of carcinogens, such as tobacco smoke, radiation, chemicals, or infectious agents. Other cancer-promoting genetic abnormalities may be randomly acquired through errors in DNA replication, or are inherited, and thus present in all cells from birth. The heritability of cancers are usually affected by complex interactions between carcinogens and the host's genome. New aspects of the genetics of cancer pathogenesis, such as DNA methylation, and microRNAs are increasingly recognized as important.
Genetic abnormalities found in cancer typically affect two general classes of genes. Cancer-promoting oncogenes are typically activated in cancer cells, giving those cells new properties, such as hyperactive growth and division, protection against programmed cell death, loss of respect for normal tissue boundaries, and the ability to become established in diverse tissue environments. Tumor suppressor genes are then inactivated in cancer cells, resulting in the loss of normal functions in those cells, such as accurate DNA replication, control over the cell cycle, orientation and adhesion within tissues, and interaction with protective cells of the immune system.
Diagnosis usually requires the histologic examination of a tissue biopsy specimen by a pathologist, although the initial indication of malignancy can be symptoms or radiographic imaging abnormalities. Most cancers can be treated and some cured, depending on the specific type, location, and stage. Once diagnosed, cancer is usually treated with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. As research develops, treatments are becoming more specific for different varieties of cancer. There has been significant progress in the development of targeted therapy drugs that act specifically on detectable molecular abnormalities in certain tumors, and which minimize damage to normal cells. The prognosis of cancer patients is most influenced by the type of cancer, as well as the stage, or extent of the disease. In addition, histologic grading and the presence of specific molecular markers can also be useful in establishing prognosis, as well as in determining individual treatments.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA