Toxic air to blame for lung cancer; no longer just a smoker's disease

Smokers and non-smokers now represent an equal number of lung cancer patients, according to a study carried out by the Lung Care Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation focused on improving lung health in India. An analysis of 150 patients at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH), New Delhi, found that close to 50 per cent of patients with lung cancer–the type of cancer responsible for the highest number of cancer deaths nationwide–had never smoked, and yet had developed the pulmonary disease. Health professionals in India now believe there is strong evidence that points to the role of air pollution in the increasing incidence of lung cancer amongst the young and female populations. “This is the first time I have seen this 1:1 ratio of smokers to non-smokers suffering from lung cancer”, Arvind Kumar, chairman, centre for chest surgery, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, told IndiaSpend. “Looking at this data, the obvious reason that comes to mind is air pollution, which contains smoke and PM 2.5.”

Maryam Mirzakhani, first woman to win Fields Medal in maths, dies at 40

Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian-born mathematician who was the first woman to win the coveted Fields Medal, has died in a US hospital after a battle with cancer. She was 40.

Mirzakhani' friend Firouz Naderi announced her death today on Instagram, and her relatives confirmed the death to the Mehr agency in Iran.

"A light was turned off today. It breaks my heart ..... gone far too soon," wrote Naderi, a former director of Solar Systems Exploration at NASA.

"A genius? Yes. But also a daughter, a mother and a wife," he added in a subsequent post.

Mirzakhani, a professor at Stanford University in California, died after cancer she had been battling for four years spread to her bone marrow, Iranian media said.

In 2014 Mirzakhani won the Fields Medal, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, which is awarded by the International Congress of Mathematicians.

The award recognized her sophisticated and highly original contributions to the fields of geometry and dynamical systems, particularly in understanding the symmetry of curved surfaces such as spheres.

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