Prof Eli Waxman and Avishay Gal-Yam were among those contacted after Princeton University scientists observed a supernova using NASA’s Swift research satellite.
Dr Gal-Yam carried out investigations to cancel out factors affecting astronomical data. The shockwave eruption and X-ray generation of the supernova fitted a theoretical model previously devised by Prof Waxman and Prof Peter Meszaros of Penn State University.
The research has already offered new information on supernovae, such as the properties of the shockwave released by the explosion.
A drug used to prevent fractures in breast-cancer patients may slow the cancer growth itself, American researchers believe.
Dr Rebecca Aft of Barnes Jewish Hospital and Washington University in St Louis said Zometa, sold by Swiss drug company Novartis, seems to prevent the spread of tumours to bones.
Her team studied 120 women with breast cancer, giving some of them intravenous infusions of Zometa.
After treatment, 23 per cent who received Zometa had tumour cells in their bone marrow, compared to 36 per cent who had not had the drug. Dr Aft said: “We think zoledronic acid changes the bone
marrow so that cancer cells are unable to lodge there.”
Photographs of a giant cardboard kangaroo taken from Israel will be among several hoped to offer new information about global warming. The 32-metre kangaroo, placed in Melbourne, is being photographed from space at sites around the world to measure the amount of sunlight reflected by the Earth. Israeli technology and space museum MadaTech in Haifa is among the participants.
The way in which the world’s largest virus invades cells has been uncovered by Weizmann Institute scientists.
A team led by Prof Abraham Minsky discovered that the mimivirus, which is five to ten times larger than any other, uses a different channel in its outer shell to enter the cell. The mimivirus’s DNA during the process is also formed as a dense block instead of a long thread, as in others.