A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
A man has died with tumours made of cancerous parasitic worm tissue growing in his organs, doctors report. The patient had HIV and his weakened immune system allowed the worm-cancer to flourish. The unusual case was diagnosed through a collaboration between the US Centers for Disease Control and the UK's Natural History Museum. Doctors said the case, detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine, was "crazy" and unusual. Colombian doctors had tried to diagnose the 41-year-old man in 2013.
He had what appeared to be normal tumours, some more than 4 cm across, in his lungs, liver and elsewhere in his body. But on closer inspection the cancerous cells were clearly not human - they were tiny at just a tenth of the size of a human cell. "It didn't really make sense," said Dr Atis Muehlenbachs, who picked up the "crazy" case at the US Centers of Disease Control.He ran through several theories including shrinking human cancer cells or even a newly discovered infection. Eventually, molecular testing identified high levels of tapeworm DNA in the tumours and the reaction was "complete disbelief" from Dr Muehlenbachs. "It should have been obvious this was cancer or an infection and not being able to tell between the two for months is unusual."
The patient was too sick to treat by the time doctors were able to identify the cause of his tumours. He died, in Medellin in Colombia, three days after the worm DNA was discovered.The worm tissue in question came from dwarf tapeworm - Hymenolepis nana - a specialism of Dr Peter Olson from the Natural History Museum. Around 90% of the worm's body is given over to reproduction as it spews out thousands of eggs into the gut every day. Rather than the worm getting cancer, it is thought one of these eggs penetrated the lining of the intestines, mutated and ultimately became cancerous.
"They were dividing and proliferating out of control and that is really what defines a cancer so they had a tape worm tumour," Dr Olson said.
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