PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists have started an 18-month study of a new liver cancer treatment that involves the use of millions of tiny, radioactive beads.

The Thomas Jefferson University Hospital researchers said the technique, called radioembolization, is being used for the first time in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, or primary liver cancer.

Dr. Brian Carr, an oncology professor at the university's medical college, said the trial also includes patients from the University of Texas' M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the University of Pittsburgh.

Carr said the tiny beads, or "microspheres," containing the radioactive isotope Yttrium-90 are injected into the liver's hepatic artery. The microspheres, in addition to blocking blood flow to the tumor, emit radiation directly to the cancer, sparing healthy tissue.

Although the treatment doesn't cure the cancer, it can shrink tumors and help patients live longer.

"Ideally, if the radioembolization trial is successful, many of these patients would have their liver tumors shrunken to the point where surgery is possible," said Carr. "It would be a significant contribution to the field if we could downstage the tumors so we could do more transplants, which is the only cure."

Scientists learn how iron harms the brain

COVENTRY, England, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- British and Indian scientists have found how iron accumulates in the brain, resulting in some forms of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases.

Although essential to human health, iron can be toxic. The body employs a protein called transferrin to transport iron safely through the bloodstream to tissues in which it can be used. The protein combines molecules of iron with another substance and then curls around the iron to seal it, preventing any interactions until the iron reaches tissues in which it can be used.

The researchers discovered that when this mechanism did not work properly, molecules of transferrin arranged themselves into filaments. Instead of being safely enclosed by the transferrin, iron was deposited along the length of the filaments in a series of spots or bands.

When transported in that manner, iron was dangerously exposed, and could interact in ways that damage cells.

The researchers said they believe their findings will help in understanding how forms of Parkinson's, Huntington's and Alzheimer's occur, and how they can be treated.

The study, which involved scientists from the University of Warwick and the Indian Institute of Technology, appears in the online edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie.

MIT achieves superconducting insight

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 13 (UPI) -- U.S. physicists said they have achieved a new understanding of high temperature superconductors that might overturn many existing theories.

Superconductors are able to transmit electricity with no resistance at temperatures well above absolute zero. Scientists have long understood that if superconductors could be made to work at room temperatures, they would have potentially limitless applications.

In the new study, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers looked at the state of that superconductors inhabit just above the temperature at which they start to superconduct -- a state called the pseudogap. It had already been shown that natural impurities in a superconducting material, such as a missing or replaced atom, allow electrons to reach energy levels normally within the superconducting gap, so they can scatter.

The new MIT study shows scattering by impurities occurs not only when a material is in the pseudogap state but also when it's in the superconducting state.

The finding challenges the theory that the pseudogap is only a precursor state to the superconductive state and offers evidence that the two states can coexist, the physicists said.

The complex research is reported in the February issue of Nature Physics.

Warning: Lake Mead may become dry by 2021

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have issued an urgent warning that Lake Mead, which supplies water to millions of people in southwestern states, might be dry by 2021.

The warning from researchers Tim Barnett and David Pierce at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego was prompted by an analysis of current and anticipated water use, as well as human-induced climate changes.

The scientists said without Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell, the Colorado River system cannot sustain the population of the Southwest through an unusually dry year, or worse, a sustained drought.

"We were stunned at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us," said Barnett. "Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest."

The scientists further predict there is a 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017.

"It's likely to mean real changes to how we live and do business in this region," Pierce added.

The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Water Resources Research.