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The ultra-fast cancer treatments which could replace conventional radiotherapy

  From - BBC World News By -  David Cox Edited by - Amal Udawatta     Getty Images (Credit: Getty Images) A pioneering new treatment promises to tackle a wider range of cancers, with fewer side-effects than conventional radiotherapy. It also takes less than a second. In a series of vast underground caverns on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland, experiments are taking place which may one day lead to new generation of radiotherapy machines. The hope is that these devices could make it possible to  cure complex brain tumours ,  eliminate cancers that have metastasised  to distant organs, and generally  limit the toll  which cancer treatment exerts on the human body. The home of these experiments is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (Cern), best known to the world as the particle physics hub that developed the Large Hadron Collider, a 27 kilometre (16.7 mile)-long ring of superconducting magnets capable of accelerating particles to n...

Cod liver oil: A fishy fix that had suprisingly clear health benefits

      From - BBC World News Edited by -Amal Udawatta Getty Images When many people struggled to eat a healthy diet, odd-tasting oils were touted as a fix-all. It turns out one of them did indeed pack a vitamin punch. These days, the words "cod liver oil" are vaguely sepia-tinged. They conjure up an image of a murky spoonful of something, brandished by a school nurse or a Dickensian headmaster. So many remedies from the 18th and 19th Centuries have not stood the test of time. We no longer, for instance,  routinely give crying babies opiates . Syrup of figs and  castor oil are no longer considered cure-alls , though they take care of constipation perhaps a little too well. And when was the last time you stopped by the chemist's for  brimstone and treacle ? But cod liver oil is one of those rare remedies from the age of snake oil and patent medicine that actually had something to it. Made from heating the livers of codfish and catching the oil that leaks out, ...