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The growth of certain aggressive brain tumors can be halted by cutting off their access to a signaling molecule produced by the brain’s nerve cells, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Influenza viruses mutate rapidly, which is why flu vaccines have to be redesigned every year. A new study from MIT sheds light on just how these viruses evolve so quickly, and offers a potential way to slow them down.

Arctic sea ice extent has likely reached its minimum extent for the year, at 4.64 million square kilometers (1.79 million square miles) on September 13, 2017, according to a team of international scientists. The 2017 minimum is the eighth lowest in the 38-year satellite record. The Arctic sea ice minimum marks the day – typically in mid-September – when sea ice reaches its smallest extent at the end of the summer melt season.

Tropical Depression Pilar weakened to a remnant low pressure area as it continued to crawl north along the west coast of Mexico. Satellite data revealed no circulation center.

Since Captain James Cook’s discovery in the 1770s that water encompassed the Earth’s southern latitudes, oceanographers have been studying the Southern Ocean, its physics, and how it interacts with global water circulation and the climate.