Earth

"SWOG always brings an impressive portfolio of work to the ASCO annual meeting," said SWOG Chair Charles D. Blanke, MD, "and this year I'm particularly excited about the research our investigators are presenting because it includes results that are likely to be practice-changing."

Investigators will present 12 abstracts from SWOG-led or co-led studies and 11 abstracts from studies led by other groups within the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN).

Invasive species, beware: Your days of hiding may be ending.

Biologists led by the University of Iowa discovered the presence of the invasive New Zealand mud snail by detecting their DNA in waters they were inhabiting incognito. The researchers employed a technique called environmental DNA (eDNA) to reveal the snails' existence, showing the method can be used to detect and control new, unknown incursions by the snail and other invasive species.

Rare disease experts detail the first results of an unprecedented collaboration to diagnose people living with unsolved cases of rare diseases across Europe. The findings are published today in a series of six papers in the European Journal of Human Genetics.

While it is widely accepted that climate change drove the evolution of our species in Africa, the exact character of that climate change and its impacts are not well understood. Glacial-interglacial cycles strongly impact patterns of climate change in many parts of the world, and were also assumed to regulate environmental changes in Africa during the critical period of human evolution over the last ~1 million years. The ecosystem changes driven by these glacial cycles are thought to have stimulated the evolution and dispersal of early humans.

The use of many chemical fumigants in agriculture have been demonstrated to be harmful to human health and the environment and therefore banned from use.

Now, in an effort to reduce waste from the agricultural industry and reduce the amounts of harmful chemicals used, researchers have investigated using organic byproducts from beer production and farming as a potential method to disinfest soils, preserve healthy soil microorganisms and increase crop yields.

Oncotarget published "Activation of plasmacytoid dendritic cells promotes AML-cell fratricide" which reported that Interferons have been previously shown to aid in the clearance of AML cells. Type I interferons are produced primarily by plasmacytoid dendritic cells. However, these cells exist in a quiescent state in AML.

Oncotarget published "Piperlongumine promotes death of retinoblastoma cancer cells" which reported that while retinoblastoma initiation is triggered by the inactivation of both alleles of the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor gene in the developing retina, tumor progression requires additional epigenetic changes, retinoblastoma genomes being quite stable.

Corals are in trouble. All across the globe the diverse and dynamic ecosystems are taking huge hits year after year. The Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral since 1995. Scientists are seeing similar declines in reefs from Hawai'i to the Florida Keys and across the Indo-Pacific region.

The widespread decline is fueled in part by climate-driven heatwaves that induce coral bleaching -- the breakdown of the relationship between shallow-water coral and the symbiotic algae they rely upon for nutrients.

What The Study Did: This survey study examined the associations of having an incarcerated immediate or extended family member with perceived well-being and change in projected life expectancy among adults in the United States.

Authors: Ram Sundaresh, M.D., M.S., of the University of California, Los Angeles, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.11821)

While DNA is often idealised as the "molecule of life", it is also a highly sophisticated polymer that can be used for next-generation materials. Beyond the fact that it can store information, further fascinating aspects of DNA are its geometric and topological properties, such as knotting and super-coiling. Indeed, very much like a twisted telephone cord, DNA is often found coiled up inside bacteria and other cells and even knotted in viruses.

AMES, Iowa - Researchers have developed new types of materials that combines two or three types of nanoparticles into structures that display fundamental new properties such as superfluorescence.

An international archaeological study, led by researchers from the Culture and Socio-Ecological Dynamics (CaSEs) research group at Pompeu Fabra University, has advanced in the understanding and preservation of archaeological sites and in improving their analysis and surveying, thanks to the application of pXRF (portable X-ray fluorescence analysis) to anthropogenic sediments in Africa. It is a rapid, inexpensive, non-invasive procedure, which enables generating an additional archaeological record from the anthropogenic deposit by analysing chemical elements, combined with geostatistics.

The research team of the Department of Organic Chemistry of Samara Polytech under the leadership of Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Head of the Department Yuri Klimochkin and Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Professor Alexander Reznikov in cooperation with the crystallographic research group of Lomonosov Moscow State University (supervisor - candidate of chemical sciences, senior researcher Victor Rybakov) completed a study to obtain non-racemic 4,5-dihydrofurans based on Michael addition and study their chemical properties.

Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) Collaboration directly observed a spectral softening of helium nuclei at about 34TeV for the first time. This work was based on measurements data of the helium spectrum with kinetic energies from 70 GeV to 80 TeV (17.5 GeV/n to 20 TeV/n for per nucleon) recorded by the DAMPE.

The relevant results were published in Physical Review Letters.

New Haven, Conn. -- The ancient burrowers of the seafloor have been getting a bum rap for years.

These prehistoric dirt churners -- a wide assortment of worms, trilobites, and other animals that lived in Earth's oceans hundreds of millions of years ago -- are thought to have played a key role in creating the conditions needed for marine life to flourish. Their activities altered the chemical makeup of the sea itself and the amount of oxygen in the oceans, in a process called bioturbation.