Today, we look at a newly approved treatment for one of the most intractable cancers, explore whether A.I. could help replicate a lab scientist’s “magic hands” and get a peek at a NASA telescope set to enter the skies on Sunday. Plus: a quiz about last night’s lunar eclipse and a journey to a penguin colony. New drug could transform pancreatic cancer
On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug for advanced pancreatic cancer, ushering in a new era of treatment for a disease that has long been considered one of the most hopeless in medicine. The drug, taken as two pills a day, is the first of its type and has electrified cancer specialists and patients. It is not a cure, but it is the first treatment to substantially extend the lives of patients with pancreatic cancer. ‘Magic hands’
In science, success can be just as mysterious as failure. Some researchers consistently get experiments to work, earning befuddled admiration from colleagues. There’s even a special term for this gift: magic hands. The idea may come as a surprise to people who don’t spend their lives in labs. Science is not supposed to be magic. Enter the start-up called Transfyr, which came out of stealth mode this week with $25 million in seed funding. The company is using an A.I. model to watch researchers’ every move and help figure out why some experiments work and some don’t. A new era of space exploration
On Sunday, NASA plans to launch its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which promises to chart a view of the universe so wide and so deep that it would take more than half a million high-definition TVs to display just one image in full. With a gaze up to a thousand times faster and at least a hundred times wider than Hubble’s, Roman will use its crisp infrared vision to capture billions of galaxies and stars, as well as to discover an estimated 100,000 new exoplanets. Astronomers will use this data to shed light on the nature of dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities that make up about 95 percent of the universe, and complete the census of planets in our Milky Way. Quiz timeTEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE This question is inspired by the moon, which gave us one last hurrah on Thursday night into Friday morning when it wandered into Earth’s shadow and blushed red during a lunar eclipse. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.) Lunar eclipses and solar eclipses often occur in pairs how far apart? Peru’s penguins
Punta San Juan in Peru was once home to one of the largest breeding colonies of Humboldt penguins in the world. Now, just four penguins remain amid a graveyard of nearly 200 empty nests. Scientists worry about the penguins’ future in the face of changing temperatures and warming waters. Get an inside look at the penguin colony here. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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