Early Detection of Cancer With Help of Mice

 A laboratory researcher holds a mouse. Photo: Shutterstock
A laboratory researcher holds a mouse. Photo: Shutterstock
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Early Detection of Cancer With Help of Mice

 A laboratory researcher holds a mouse. Photo: Shutterstock
A laboratory researcher holds a mouse. Photo: Shutterstock

Scientists are ready to try anything that may help them develop new mechanisms to detect cancer and treat it in its early stages. In their latest, and perhaps most unusual efforts, scientists from Russia announced experiments to test a new early detection technique next week with the help of mice.

The Promising Research Fund said the experiments will start on November 14, in cooperation with a medical team from Veliky Novgorod at the city's hospital, to examine the "bio-mixed test" technique to detect lung and stomach tumors using mice as sensors that monitors the signs of the disease.

The experiment will involve 1500 volunteers. Doctors will analyze the air that comes out as they breathe, while exhaling in a bio-technical network, in which the mouse plays a key role.

Before the test, the scientists will plant special electrodes inside the mouse's olfactory system, linked to a special program that analyzes and records the biological rhythms resulting from the reaction of their olfactory receptors when inhaling the air exhaled from the human lungs.

This helps stabilize special biological rhythms resulting from the exposure of olfactory receptors in mice to cancer signs that appear with exhalation, thus revealing the disease.

The scientific team hopes the experiment to end with positive results, and believe that this mechanism may contribute to a simple and rapid detection of cancer, which will help control and eliminate the disease in its first or second stage, before it develops into dangerous levels during which the response to treatment declines.



Tokyo Police Care for Lost Umbrellas, Keys, Flying Squirrels

This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
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Tokyo Police Care for Lost Umbrellas, Keys, Flying Squirrels

This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
This photo taken on August 2, 2024 shows thousands of umbrellas in containers at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)

Lost your umbrella, keys, or perhaps a flying squirrel? In Tokyo, the police are almost certainly taking meticulous care of it.

In Japan, lost items are rarely disconnected from their owners for long, even in a mega city like Tokyo -- population 14 million.

"Foreign visitors are often surprised to get their things back," said Hiroshi Fujii, a 67-year-old tour guide at Tokyo's vast police lost-and-found center.

"But in Japan, there's always an expectation that we will."

It's a "national trait" to report items found in public places in Japan, he told AFP. "We pass down this custom of reporting things we picked up, from parents to children."

Around 80 staff at the police center in Tokyo's central Iidabashi district ensure items are well organized using a database system, its director Harumi Shoji told AFP.

Everything is tagged and sorted to hasten a return to its rightful owner.

ID cards and driving licenses are most frequently lost, Shoji said.

- Flying squirrels, iguanas -

But dogs, cats and even flying squirrels and iguanas have been dropped off at police stations, where officers look after them "with great sensitivity" -- consulting books, online articles and vets for advice.

More than four million items were handed in to Tokyo Metropolitan Police last year, with about 70 percent of valuables such as wallets, phones and important documents successfully reunited with their owners.

"Even if it's just a key, we enter details such as the mascot keychain it's attached to," Shoji said in a room filled with belongings, including a large Cookie Monster stuffed toy.

Over the course of one afternoon, dozens of people came to collect or search for their lost property at the center, which receives items left with train station staff or at small local police stations across Tokyo if they are not claimed within two weeks.

If no one turns up at the police facility within three months, the unwanted item is sold or discarded.

The number of lost items handled by the center is increasing as Japan welcomes a record influx of tourists post-pandemic, and as gadgets become smaller, Shoji said.

Wireless earphones and hand-held fans are an increasingly frequent sight at the lost-and-found center, which has been operating since the 1950s.

But a whopping 200 square meters is dedicated to lost umbrellas -- 300,000 of which were brought in last year, with only 3,700 of them returned, Shoji said.

"We have a designated floor for umbrellas... during the rainy season, there are so many umbrellas that the umbrella trolley is overflowing and we have to store them in two tiers."