Scott Hixson

The pediatric surgeon drowned Sunday while rescuing two stranded boys from Lake Michigan

Dr. Donald Liu was an elite pediatric surgeon at the University of Chicago Medicine’s Comer Children’s Hospital. His passing will be remembered as heroic as he is being mourned as a man who “always did the right thing.”

Dr. Donald Liu, chief of pediatric surgery at Comer Children’s Hospital, passed away Sunday after diving into the waters of Lake Michigan in an attempt to save two boys struggling to swim after having fallen from their kayak.

Dr. Donald Liu raced along the beach in Berrien County, Mich., after spotting the boys. According to Liu’s wife and local authorities, despite objections from his children, who worried about the dangerous conditions presented by the rough water, Liu dove in to save the boys, who were not wearing lifejackets.

Dr. Liu made it to the boys, said his wife, Dr. Dana Suskind, but was not able to escape the rip current. Emergency responders arrived at the scene at about 10:40 a.m. and pulled Liu, 50, from the water. His wife of over 17 years, who is also a surgeon, performed CPR, but Liu was pronounced dead shortly after. The boys he saved, who were friends of the family, reached land safely.

“You couldn’t stop him,” Suskind told ABCNews.com. “He always did the right thing.”

Suskind continued, “He had the biggest heart. He was a brilliant surgeon … but what was amazing about him was that he was the best father, that was his priority in life, and he loved me with all of his heart.”

“This is a man that would wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning, be in the operating room in 10 or 15 minutes, literally save a child’s life who was bleeding to death from trauma – a car accident, gunshot wound, a beating,” said Dr. John Alverdy, executive vice chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago.

Jeffrey Matthews, chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine, said of Dr. Donald Liu, “He was known as a selfless individual who was completely devoted to children.” Matthews added, “People will tell you that he’s the heart and soul of our pediatric programs. And always going the extra mile. He was tireless. You know, the kind of guy would operate all day and all night and say, ‘Where do we have to go next?’ And he would do whatever the children needed.”

“Everything [Liu] did, everything he talked about was always for the children,” Matthews continued. “And so the tragedy is that he died, of course, as a hero doing what he did every day, which was saving children.”

Dr. Donald Liu is survived by three children – Genevieve, 13, Asher, 10, and Amelie, 7 – and his wife, Dr. Dana Suskind.

“I’m really sad that my dad died because every time he would come home from work at 5 o’clock, even though he didn’t have to, he would play baseball with me and we would go in the backyard,” Asher said. “We would always watch the White Sox together.”

Dr. Donald Liu will be buried in University of Chicago surgical scrubs. He will be holding a White Sox baseball, a video game and his children’s pictures.

Services will be Wednesday morning at a yet to be determined time at KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation at 1100 E. Hyde Park Blvd.

The University of Chicago campus is planning another memorial to be held in September.

The Curiosity rover has sent back a number of grainy images from the Martian landscape

New Mars photos taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover reveal the Martian surface after an eight-month, suspense-ridden 352-million-mile journey to the red planet. The mission has been heralded as a tremendous success by NASA administrators, engineers and citizens alike.

The new Mars photos reveal Martian gravel, a mountain framed by the Martian sunset and the craft’s suspenseful descent through the atmosphere in grainy, black-and-white detail.

The Curiosity rover weighs one ton and many feared its seven minute plunge through the atmosphere from 13,000 mph to zero would result in disaster. However, the roving laboratory, approximately the size of a compact car, touched down late Sunday night on a perfectly flat portion of a crater, right on target.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory rung with the cheers and applause of engineers and administrators as they rejoiced the mission’s initial success, JPL Director Charles Elachi compared the mission to the ongoing Olympic Games, “This team came back with the gold.”

“Everybody in the morning should be sticking their chests out and saying, ‘That’s my rover on Mars,’” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

“We have ended one phase of the mission much to our enjoyment,” said mission manager Mike Watkins. “But another part has just begun.”

The $2.5 billion nuclear-powered roving laboratory will not begin moving for a couple of weeks but will eventually dig into the Martian surface to analyze soil and rock for some of the molecular components of life, including carbon, while also sending color photos, panoramas and videos back to Earth. The color photos, videos and panoramas will start arriving in the coming days.

The news Mars photos relayed to NASA shortly after Curiosity’s landing are the result of tiny cameras designed to spot obstructions in front of the rover’s wheels. Despite the poor quality of the pictures, NASA scientists are ecstatic.

According to Watkins, every photo reveals “a new Mars we have never seen before. So every one of those pictures is the most beautiful picture I have ever seen.”

One of the new Mars photos was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a 7-year-old craft orbiting 211 miles directly above Curiosity as it plummeted towards the Martian surface. The orbiter was able to snap a photo of the rover as it was suspended from its parachute approximately one minute before touchdown.

In another of the new Mars photos, you can see “a silhouette of Mount Sharp in the setting sun,” according to chief mission scientist from the California Institute of Technology, John Grotzinger.

“It’s just mind-boggling to me,” said Miguel San Martin, chief engineer for the landing team.

Former NASA chief technologist Bobby Braun said of the mission, “I think its engineering at its finest. What engineers do is they make the impossible possible.”

Thanks to the International Business Times for an excellent compilation of the photos, available here.

The skin cancer was found in wild coral trout and resembles melanoma in humans

Skin cancer, similar to melanoma found in humans, has been found in a wild marine fish population for the first time, according to a study conducted by Newcastle University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

The skin cancer was found in coral trout on the Great Barrier Reef, directly under the largest hole in the ozone layer in the world.

According to Dr. Michael Sweet of Newcastle University and leader of the research team, this is the first time cancer has been found in any wild fish and the skin cancer found is nearly identical to melanoma found in humans.

“The individuals we looked at had extensive surface melanomas, which means the cancer had not spread any deeper than the skin so apart from the surface lesions the fish were basically healthy,” Dr. Sweet said.

“Further work needs to be carried out to establish the exact cause of the cancer but having eliminated other likely factors such as microbial pathogens and marine pollution,” Dr. Sweet continued. “UV radiation appears to be the likely cause.

“Once the cancer spreads further you would expect the fish to become quite sick, becoming less active and possibly feeding less, hence less likely to be caught. This suggests the actual percentage affected by the cancer is less likely to be higher than observed in this study.”

The study found 15 percent of the 136 coral trout sampled showed dark lesions on the skin. The legions ranged from covering as little as 5 percent of the skin to almost the entire fish.

“Now it’s been found it’s more than likely that people will start to notice it elsewhere and we think we have only found the early stages,” Dr. Sweet said. “The fish with the later stages might well suffer from big behavior changes, for example they could be eaten by predators or simply die. The findings are strongly linked to UV and it’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be linked to the hole in the ozone layer.”

Until this discovery, UV-induced melanoma in fish had only been observed under laboratory conditions.