Are you planning to watch the total solar eclipse on April 8? Its path travels from Mazatlán, Mexico, through Texas, the Midwest, New England and Newfoundland, and it will be the last total solar eclipse viewable across North America until 2044. Catch it if you can! (I’m going to a relative’s house in Ohio and am hoping for clear skies … but prepared for clouds.) Scientific American contributing editor Rebecca Boyle previews the spectacle and explains why scientists are thrilled with the opportunity it offers to study the sun. We’ve been learning a lot about our star thanks to two new solar space probes that have already started eyeing the sun. Look for extensive coverage of the eclipse on our website, including podcasts and videos. We’re very excited about it.
Cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment have made enormous progress in the past few decades. One of the most hopeful developments is a type of medicine called an antibody-drug conjugate, or ADC, that can deliver chemotherapy drugs to a tumor with minimal damage to healthy cells. The pieces are mix and match, like Lego bricks: a cancer-killing drug, an antibody that clings to tumor cells and a connector that releases the drug at the right time. Health and science journalist Jyoti Madhusoodanan shows how this therapy works, how it is being refined in clever ways and why researchers are glad to see positive results in so many clinical trials. We hope these techniques will give more cancer patients the best possible outcome: more time.
Nia Imara is an artist and astrophysicist (what a fun combination!) who studies the origins of stars. She shares her research using miniature physical models of molecular clouds to identify their filaments and knots of gas and the turbulent swirls that create stars and solar systems. It’s one of the loveliest uses of 3-D printing I’ve seen, and reading her article may make you want to hold the whole protoworld in your hands.
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