Pancreatic-head tumours (red, artificially coloured) have proven highly resistant to treatment, but a new drug nearly doubles the lifespan of people with this type of cancer.Credit: PNMB/Science Photo Library The experimental drug, daraxonrasib, disarms all three members of the RAS family of proteins, which are linked to some of the deadliest cancers. Designing drugs that target the RAS proteins has been notoriously challenging. But a large clinical trial has found that daraxonrasib nearly doubled survival ' from 6.7 months to 13.2 months ' in people with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer. The results were presented to a packed room at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois on 31 May, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine1. At the conference, the talk was met with a long standing ovation, says Ecaterina Dumbrava, an oncologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. 'After more than a decade without major advances in treatment for pancreatic cancer, seeing this is really emotional,' she says....

For most of modern history, economic growth has been tightly coupled with the use of fossil fuels. Cities now house more than half of the world's population, and that urbanization has come hand-in-hand with ecological degradation, air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. But now, an assessment of 2,475 of the world's biggest cities has found that in 80% of them, economic growth is no longer dependent on an increase in fossil-fuel-related emissions. The study, published today in Nature Cities1, used satellite data to measure levels of the greenhouse gas nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emitted from cities, and compared these data with information on gross domestic product (GDP). The findings indicate that almost 2,000 cities worldwide have implemented green policies that generated economic prosperity while reducing dependencies on fossil fuels. 'This research is revealing the importance of cities in addressing twenty-first-century sustainability challenges,' says Michail Fragkias, an applied economist at Boise State University in Idaho, who was not involved in the work....

The pattern goes back to January 8, 1981, when Allende began her first novel, The House of the Spirits. Ever since, she has cleared her calendar and started a new book on that date, assuming she had finished the previous one. The ritual has helped her publish a book about every 18 months for 43 years. Today, at age 83, Allende 'is the most translated female 'Spanish'language author in the world, by far. 'When I am writing a book, I need to close the door when I finish, and no one should get in,' she explained when I visited her home in Sausalito, California. 'I have the idea in my mind that the story is an entity that lives in that room, with the characters and the emotions that I have been putting together. And when I come back the next day, I open the door and it's waiting for me intact. I don't want anybody to go in and vacuum, or to use my computer'that would kill me!' She paused for a moment. 'Without the silence, and the structure, I wouldn't be able to do it.' Allende's January 8 ritual is a form of what social scientists call a 'commitment device': a 'self'imposed restriction of freedom in service of a larger goal. Commitment devices have been shown to help people save more money, by having a bank account with limited withdrawal windows, and exercise more, by signing a contract to pay a fine if they skip too many days at the gym....

Here's what happened: On Saturday evening, a man carrying a shotgun, a handgun, and knives got close to the ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where more than 2,000 guests, including the president of the United States, were enjoying the appetizer course at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. 'I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes,' the would-be shooter purportedly wrote in a letter that was apparently written in the lead-up to his attack. He said his targets were Trump-administration officials, 'prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.' Terrifying, for sure. But here's what happened next: The assailant was intercepted by armed agents from the Secret Service before he came anywhere close to his intended victims. He was tackled, restrained, and arrested after sprinting past a security checkpoint, through which guests passed earlier in the evening. Shots were fired. The alleged assailant, later identified as Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, hit a Secret Service agent, whose bulletproof vest and cellphone protected him. The agent is recovering. The suspect is in custody. No one died. And the president, his Cabinet, and all other dinner guests left the ballroom safely....