Culture
More than 20 percent of the five staple crops that provide half the globe's caloric intake are lost to pests each year. Climate change and global trade drive the spread, emergence, and re-emergence of crop disease, and containment action is often inefficient, especially in low-income countries. A Global Surveillance System (GSS) to strengthen and interconnect crop biosecurity systems could go a long way to improving global food security, argues a team of experts in the June 28 issue of Science.
A study by investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center has found that, contrary to common assumptions, the fact that a specific genetic mutation frequently arises in particular tumors may not signify that the mutation drives cancer development and progression.
Based on careful study of fossilized teeth, scientists Keegan Melstom and Randall Irmis at the Natural History Museum of Utah at the University of Utah have found that multiple ancient groups of crocodyliforms--the group including living and extinct relatives of crocodiles and alligators--were not the carnivores we know today, as reported in the journal Current Biology on June 27.
Two Australian studies published this week offer the first proof of a 70-year-old theory of turbulence.
"The studies confirm a seminal theory of the formation of large-scale vortices from turbulence in 2D fluid flow, where the large vortices emerge from an apparent chaos of smaller vortices," says author Prof Matt Davis, FLEET's lead on the University of Queensland paper.
Fluids restricted to flow in two-dimensions can be observed in systems ranging from electrons in semiconductors, to the surface of soap bubbles, to atmospheric phenomena such as cyclones.
Bottom Line: An observational study suggests the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) lung cancer screening guidelines may be too conservative for African American smokers and that some eligibility criteria changes could result in more screenings of African American smokers at high risk for lung cancer. The study looked at new lung cancer cases in a predominantly low-income and African American population group to assess their eligibility for lung cancer screening using the USPSTF criteria.
Guidelines that determine which smokers qualify for CT scans are excluding a significant number of African Americans who develop lung cancer, according to a study released today in JAMA Oncology.
The health disparity merits modifications to lung cancer screening criteria, said lead author Melinda Aldrich, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of Thoracic Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
A happy cell is a balanced cell, but for every stupendously twisted protein it creates, it must tear the old ones asunder. That means untangling a convoluted pretzel-like mass for recycling. Cdc48 plays a critical role in unraveling the spent proteins.
In cinema and science fiction, one small change in the past can have major, sometimes life-changing effects in the future. Using a series of snapshots, researchers recently captured such so-called "butterfly effects" in heart muscle cell development, and say this new view into the sequence of gene expression activity may lead to better understanding disease risk.
The study, published June 28 in Science, identified hundreds of DNA regions that are associated with differences in gene expression between individuals.
Until now, researchers believed recurrent mutations (hotspot mutations) in cancer tumors were the important mutations (driver mutations) that promoted cancer progression. A new University of California, Irvine-led study indicates this is not always true.
As you stir milk into a cup of coffee, you will see fluid turbulence in action - rapid mixing that has defied deep scientific understanding.
A collaboration between researchers at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and University of Queensland, Australia, set out to learn more about the everyday enigma of turbulence by using the remarkable properties of superfluids, strange quantum fluids able to flow endlessly without any friction.
It's no surprise that using human embryos for biological and medical research comes with many ethical concerns. Correct though it is to proceed with caution in these matters, the fact is that much science would benefit from being able to study human biology more accurately.
One solution lies with alternative tools - what scientists call in vitro models. But despite some advancements with adult tissues, when it comes to modelling the early developmental processes of the human embryo, things become complicated.
NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a world between the sizes of Mars and Earth orbiting a bright, cool, nearby star. The planet, called L 98-59b, marks the tiniest discovered by TESS to date.
The secret to making clothing practically indestructible could be the same thing that makes us grow out of it: sugar.
A new discovery from the University of Virginia School of Medicine reveals how sugars could be used to make almost indestructible cloth and other materials. Nature figured it out long ago, but the answer has been hidden away in bubbling baths of acid.
Amazing Extremophiles
A big data study covering more than 7,500 households across 23 tropical countries shows that natural biodiversity could be effective insurance for rural farmers against drought and other weather-related shocks.
Frederick Noack, assistant professor of food and resource economics in UBC's faculty of land and food systems, worked with colleagues from ETH Zurich and the University of Geneva to study whether natural biodiversity helps buffer farmers' incomes against weather shocks.
A study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that individuals reported more gastrointestinal bloating when they ate a diet high in salt.
The scientists re-analyzed data from a large clinical trial--the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension-Sodium trial (DASH-Sodium)--conducted two decades ago, and found that high sodium intake increased bloating among trial participants. The researchers also found that the high-fiber DASH diet increased bloating among trial participants compared to a low-fiber control diet.