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The transition from hunter-gatherer to sedentary farming 10,000 years ago occurred in multiple neighbouring but genetically distinct populations according to research by an international team including UCL.

"It had been widely assumed that these first farmers were from a single, genetically homogeneous population. However, we've found that there were deep genetic differences in these early farming populations, indicating very distinct ancestries," said corresponding author Dr Garrett Hellenthal, UCL Genetics.

La Jolla, Calif., July 14, 2016 (embargoed until 2:00 P.M. EST) -- Dietary restriction, or limited food intake without malnutrition, has beneficial effects on longevity in many species, including humans. A new study from the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP), published today in PLoS Genetics, represents a major advance in understanding how dietary restriction leads to these advantages.

(New York, NY - July, 14, 2016 2:00 pm ET) Despite recent achievements in the development of cancer immunotherapies, only a small group of patients typically respond to them. Predictive markers of disease course and response to immunotherapy are urgently needed. To address this need, researchers at The Tisch Cancer Institute (TCI) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a new method of analyzing multiple tissue markers using only one slide of a tumor section to better understand immune response occurring locally.

Several hunter-gatherer populations independently adopted farming in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period, then went on to sow the seeds of farming far and wide, a new analysis suggests. The results contribute to the debate about whether a single source population in farming's cradle spread the culture and genes associated with the hunter-gatherer to farmer transition, or whether multiple different farmer groups, potentially with multiple, localized domestications, played a role in spreading the technology.

Species "intactness" has dropped below what one research group considers the safe limit across about 58% of Earth's terrestrial surface, a new study reports. The results, part of perhaps the most comprehensive quantification of global biodiversity change to date, provide key insights into the current extent of biodiversity losses, which have been lacking to date. The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) captures changes in species abundance.

In this Policy Forum, Neil Ferguson et al. use results from a model of virus transmission to analyze the current Zika epidemic in Latin America, suggesting that it may have already peaked. Evidence increasingly suggests a causal link between Zika infection and microcephaly, as well as other serious congenital anomalies, prompting the World Health Organization to declare the Zika epidemic an international health concern in February 2016.

When doctors hurl toxic death at cancer cells, often a few will survive and come back. A family of enzymes called KDM5 histone demethylases is emerging as important for this resilience, and drugs that inhibit KDM5 enzymes could be active in treating several types of cancer.

• Up to half of all new HIV infections over next 15 years in eastern Europe will stem from inmates who inject drugs
• Scaling up opioid substitution therapy in prisons and after release could prevent over a quarter of new HIV infections among injecting drug users over 5 years

Prisoners and detainees worldwide have higher burdens of HIV, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis than the communities from which they come, and the regular cycling of infected people in and out of incarceration is worsening the epidemics both inside and outside of prison, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health-led research suggests.

An international team of scientists has sequenced the whole genomes and epigenomes of more than 1,000 Arabidopsis thaliana plants, sampled from geographically diverse locations. The collection of 1,001 genomes and 1,001 epigenomes not only illuminates new aspects of its evolutionary history, but also provides a comprehensive, species-wide picture of the interaction between genetic and epigenetic variation in this important model plant.

Where is the world's greatest concentration of unique species of mammals? A team of American and Filipino authors have concluded that it is Luzon Island, in the Philippines. Their 15-year project, summarized in a paper published in the scientific journal Frontiers of Biogeography, has shown that out of 56 species of non-flying mammal species that are now known to live on the island, 52 live nowhere else in the world. Of those 56 species, 28 were discovered during the course of the project.

Older women who sustain facial injuries have greater risk of facial fractures, especially those who are white or Asian, while older black women have decreased risk, according to an article published online by JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.

Racial, sex and age differences related to osteoporosis fractures of the hip or other extremities are well known. Whether these findings apply to facial fractures is unknown.

Montreal, July 12, 2016 - Researchers from the University of Montreal Hospital Research Center (CRCHUM) have identified cells that provide "safe houses" for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) during antiretroviral therapy (ART).

"We have found cell markers to target HIV reservoirs. This discovery has opened new treatment perspectives to eliminate these reservoirs and perhaps one day cure people infected with the virus," said Nicolas Chomont, CRCHUM researcher and principal investigator of a study to be published July 14 in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

(Millbrook, NY) A team of scientists has developed a model that can predict bat species most likely to transmit Ebola and other filoviruses. Findings highlight new potential hosts and geographic hotspots worthy of surveillance. So reports a new paper in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

A new study has found for the first time that ocean warming is the primary cause of retreat of glaciers on the western Antarctic Peninsula. The Peninsula is one of the largest current contributors to sea-level rise and this new finding will enable researchers to make better predictions of ice loss from this region.