Afatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, significantly improved progression-free survival compared to methotrexate in patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck after failure of platinum-based chemotherapy, the results of a phase III trial presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid show.

The Lux-Head&Neck 1 trial showed that patients who received treatment with 40 mg/day oral afatinib had a 20% reduction in risk of progression or death compared to patients who received methotrexate, with a median progression-free survival of 2.6 months. 

The public is not aware of this, but academic science is more like a small business than being part of a vast university structure. An investigator is the business owner and the researchers are independent contractors, augmented by graduate students who go to the school.

In that sort of environment, where the life and death of the business is determined by beating other labs for a finite pool of money, while the government spends billions to try and increase the number of competitors who want to be in government-funded academia rather than the private sector, competitive instincts run high.

Sharing data either dilutes the strength of a research group or it allows a competitor to have a shortcut that another lab funded.  Lose-lose. 

NASA's Aqua satellite captured strong thunderstorms with colder cloud tops that have grown within Tropical Storm Rachel in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Aqua passed over the large Tropical Storm Rachel on Sept. 25 at 4:41 p.m. EDT and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument, saw that the extent of colder cloud tops had increased, indicating thunderstorm heights were increasing and it was strengthening. The expansion of those stronger thunderstorms also suggests that the northeasterly wind shear may be relaxing a little. The strongest thunderstorms remain limited to the southwest of the low-level center, 

Earth's atmosphere is a complicated dance of molecules involving the output of plants, animals and human industry in sequences of chemical reactions.

Such processes help maintain the atmosphere's chemical balance; most topically during protest week in New York City, they break down pollutants emitted from the burning of fossil fuels.

Understanding exactly how these reactions proceed is critical for predicting how the atmosphere will respond to environmental changes, but some of the steps of this dance are so quick that all of the molecules involved haven't been measured in the wild.

Periodontitis, gum infection that damages the soft tissue and destroys the bone that supports teeth, is the sixth most prevalent condition in the world affecting 743 million people worldwide, according to research from 2010.

Between 1990 and 2010, the global age-standardized prevalence of severe periodontitis was static at 11.2%. The age-standardized incidence of severe periodontitis in 2010 was 701 cases per 100,000 person-years, a non-significant increase from the 1990 incidence of severe periodontitis.

Ryan Rykaczewski, an oceanographer and assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, is part of a team that are looking deep into the ocean's past, and they have shown that natural processes can cause dramatic year-to-year drops in fish populations and growth rates.

They also raise questions about whether human activities might be making those declines more frequent.

Upwelling means phytoplankton, the perfect 'sea food'

The focus of the research is the California current, which stretches from Washington state to the Baja peninsula and is one of a handful of coastal waters on Earth from which an inordinately large portion of the world's fish harvest originates.