All posts tagged: cloak

Smart drug that strips cancer cells of ‘invisibility cloak’ can shrink tumours by 30%, trial shows | Cancer

Smart drug that strips cancer cells of ‘invisibility cloak’ can shrink tumours by 30%, trial shows | Cancer

Published by Sam Flores

A smart drug that stops cancer cells “hiding” from treatment can shrink tumours by at least 30% in six of the world’s most common forms of the disease, early trial results show. While immunotherapy treatments have improved survival rates for many patients, their effectiveness can stall or fail when tumour cells hide and then spread. Researchers in Oxford have developed a drug designed to stop cancer cells concealing themselves from the immune system, allowing immunotherapy treatments to identify and destroy them. In a trial spanning the UK, France, Spain and Australia, 83 patients with cervical, bladder, liver, bowel, lung or head and neck cancers were given the experimental drug, GRWD5769, alongside the immunotherapy treatment cemiplimab. Researchers, led by the Christie NHS foundation trust in Manchester, England, found that tumours shrank in 26 patients. Of those, 15 experienced tumour reductions of at least 30%. All participants had previously failed to respond to treatment, and most had no options left when they joined the study. Crucially, immunotherapy had not worked or had stopped working. The smart drug …

Queen Camilla puts a regal spin on ‘unexpected’ Traitors cloak

Queen Camilla puts a regal spin on ‘unexpected’ Traitors cloak

Published by Daniella Wilson

Queen Camilla made an appearance at the star-studded A King’s Trust 50th Anniversary Celebration at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday evening and wore an unexpected ensemble.  She chose a vibrant purple lace dress by her go-to designer, Fiona Clare, but added a cape – and it was by Dior. © Getty ImagesKing Charles and Queen Camilla attend A King’s Trust 50th Anniversary Celebration at Royal Albert Hall The cape, worthy of an appearance on BBC’s The Traitors Traitors, came in a beautiful deep magenta hue and cascaded down her back, covering her arms. The dress, which was on full display once Camilla removed her cape upon stepping inside, featured a V-shaped neckline and an A-line skirt.  © Getty ImagesQueen Camilla put a regal twist on a Traitors cloak As per her usual style, the Queen added a pair of slip-on shoes by Eliot Zed with a capped toe and low heel. She also wore a diamond necklace and a pair of statement earrings.  A stylist weighs in © POOL/AFP via Getty ImagesQueen Camilla removed …

The invisibility cloak inventor now has better tricks up his sleeve

The invisibility cloak inventor now has better tricks up his sleeve

Published by skeptic

Mike Finn-Kelcey/Imperial College London John Pendry’s kitchen is dominated by a huge photograph of what looks like the view through a kaleidoscope: dizzying shards of purple, green, yellow and white. Given that Pendry is famous above all else for inventing an invisibility cloak – a device that can bend light around objects – I wonder if I am looking at something related to that. But no, he tells me, the image simply shows crystals of vitamin C magnified many times. All that invisibility-cloak stuff is in the past, he says, and he has moved on to “more exciting things”. It is a throwaway remark, but it reveals something of why I have always found Pendry, who is based at Imperial College London, so interesting. This is someone who invented a device 20 years ago that sounds like magic, but his true legacy is barely appreciated. If engineers get their way, Pendry’s ideas will soon shape everything from earthquake protection to self-driving cars. Yet he seems to give the applications of his famous breakthrough barely a thought, …

Parasitic sleeping sickness creates ‘invisibility cloak’ to hide in humans for years

Parasitic sleeping sickness creates ‘invisibility cloak’ to hide in humans for years

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The notorious disease known as sleeping sickness can lurk inside a host for months or even years before serious symptoms arrive. When these tiny parasites do, it’s often a death sentence for its human host. After confounding epidemiologists for decades, researchers now know exactly how sleeping sickness can remain undetected for so long. Its secret weapon is a constantly adapting “invisibility cloak” crafted from special proteins. The evidence is laid out in a study published on March 30 in the journal Nature Microbiology. Trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness, starts with a tiny bloodsucking bug called the tsetse fly that causes a huge problem. Like the mosquito, the tsetse fly is a vector for multiple dangerous diseases. However, the tsetse fly is particularly notorious for its role in spreading sleeping sickness in humans via the parasite Typanosoma brucei gambiense (T. brucei). Roughly 70 million people across 36 countries are still at risk of contracting sleeping sickness, and a total …

Researchers create an invisibility cloak by bending magnetic fields around real-world objects

Researchers create an invisibility cloak by bending magnetic fields around real-world objects

Published by Jenni Sidey

Magnetic invisibility sounds simple in theory. Place the right materials around an object and magnetic fields flow around it as if nothing were there. Reality has been far messier. For nearly two decades, physicists have tried to cloak objects from magnetic fields using carefully arranged materials. Early designs relied on idealized shapes such as perfect cylinders or spheres. Those forms behave predictably in equations and laboratory tests. Real devices rarely cooperate. Power cables twist through irregular housings. Electronic components form sharp corners. Industrial systems contain uneven edges and layered geometries. Once these shapes enter the picture, magnetic cloaking designs often fail, leaving obvious distortions in the surrounding field. Magnetic cloaking achieved using bilayer SC-SFM metastructures with different geometries. (CREDIT: Science Advances) Researchers at the University of Leicester now report a way around that problem. Their new framework, described in Science Advances, allows magnetic cloaks to be designed for objects with complex shapes using materials that already exist. Two Materials Working Together Magnetic cloaking typically relies on a pairing of two materials. The inner layer is …

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: like a superhero cloak, a white shirt gives you formidable power | Fashion

Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: like a superhero cloak, a white shirt gives you formidable power | Fashion

Published by Sam Flores

The eternal appeal of the white shirt is not just that it goes with anything, although it does. And not only that it can take you anywhere, although it can. It is not even that it never goes out of style, or that good quality versions are accessible at real-world prices, although those are true also. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. A white shirt is self-confidence. It stands for it, and it brings it, and that’s the real secret. It is a superhero cloak that bestows you with this formidable power. Self-confidence is not as snazzy as the ability to fly or live for ever, but arguably it’s more practical. I don’t know why or how it works, but it doesn’t matter, because if you feel confident then you are confident. Faking it and making it are one and the same here. Courage is everything at this time of year, when life can feel a bit daunting. Perhaps your instinct is to hibernate in a hoodie. Hey, I hear you. But …