Culture

The skeleton of an extinct 'fish lizard' locked in a glass case over 16ft from the ground for the last 100 years has finally been studied, thanks to a selfie stick on a fishing rod.

The 145 million year old Nannopterygius is a species of ichthyosaur, which swam the seas of our planet for about 76 million years. It is on display in the Natural History Museum, London, but its glass cabinet is hung too high for easy examination.

Russian palaeontologist Nikolay Zverkov was desperate to see the London specimen as he thought some of the Russian ichthyosaurs might be similar.

It turns out he was right and that this particular species of swimming prehistoric reptile was common in its day, the Jurassic period.

To photograph and assess the skeleton, Nikolay attached a digital camera on a selfie stick to a fishing rod and connected it to a PC via a very long USB cable. He passed the photos on to University of Portsmouth palaeontologist Megan Jacobs who was working on Ichthyosaurs for her Master's Degree.

Megan and Nikolay have now published a paper on the findings in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Megan said: "Nicolay obtained excellent detailed photographs which significantly expand our knowledge of Nannoptergyius enthekiodon.

"I realised that fossil expert Dr Steve Etches had also discovered examples of Nannoptergyius near to where the original specimen was found and he'd also discovered other examples across the UK.

"Finally being able to study this enigmatic animal has shown that it was actually very common and widespread in the Late Jurassic occurring not only in England, but also in European Russia and in the Arctic."

Thanks to this new study, several more specimens of Nannopterygius have been found in museum collections across the UK - in Oxford, Cambridge and in the Etches Collection in Kimmeridge, Dorset, as well as in Russia and Norway, showing this animal to be much more common than previously thought, and making it one of the most widespread of any similar swimming reptile.

University of Portsmouth Professor of Palaeobiology, Dave Martill, a world leading expert who supervised Megan's research, said: "We previously only had detailed knowledge of a type of ichthyosaur called Ophthalmosaurus, which was known from hundreds of specimens, including well-preserved skeletons from the Middle Jurassic Oxford Clay Formation of England.

"The excellent data available for Ophthalmosaurus contrasted with the impoverished record of other Middle and Late Jurassic ichthyosaurs, so being able to access the Nannopterygius - a formerly inaccessible specimen - has given us fascinating new insight into a particular species of ichthyosaur we knew very little about."

Nikolay added: "For decades the scientific community thought that Nannopterygius was the rarest and most poorly known ichthyosaur of England. Finally we can say that we know nearly every skeletal detail of these small ichthyosaurs, and that these animals were widespread. The answer was very close - we just needed a fishing rod."

As the cell's protein factory, the ribosome is the only natural machine that manufactures its own parts. That is why understanding how the machine, itself, is made, could unlock the door to everything from understanding how life develops to designing new methods of drug production. An intensive, long research effort at the Weizmann Institute of Science has now demonstrated the self-synthesis and assembly of the small subunit of a ribosome -30S - on a surface of a chip.

Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv and Staff Scientist Dr. Shirley Shulman Daube of the Institute's Chemical and Biological Physics Department have been working on this project for around seven years. One of the main challenges to such a project is the sheer number of different molecules the cell must produce to make the subunit: The core is a long strand of RNA, and 20 different proteins must be attached to the strand. These get organized by the weak chemical forces between the protein molecules and the RNA - repelling at some points and attracting in others - and the whole structure thus relies on the proper manufacture and organization of each component. Add to that another six proteins that are not part of the structure, but act as chaperones to assist in the assembly. That makes at total of a least 27 different genes - one to encode each component or chaperone - that must work together to make the subunit.

Together with postdoctoral fellow Dr. Michael Levy, who led the current study, and research student Reuven Falkovich, the team produced the subunits on tailored chips that Bar-Ziv has developed in his lab. Ultimately, they succeeded in mimicking the natural process of synthesizing the parts and assembling them into the ribosome subunits. The tiny chips in Bar-Ziv's lab are based on densely-packed DNA strands attached at one end to the surface. In the beginning, the team used all 27 genes needed to reproduce the 30S subunit of a ribosome from an E coli bacterium. The components were caught in "molecular traps" placed near their genes, and this improved the efficiency of the process and enabled the scientists to observe the production process in real time. Then they took a step back, allowing the various parts to autonomously assemble themselves into the ribosomal units, without outside direction or interference.

Molecular hierarchy

In the beginning, Bar-Ziv and Shulman Daube found they could make the components, but getting them to self-assemble, as the natural structures do, was a challenging hurdle. Over the course of the next seven years and hundreds of trials, the scientists tracked down the proper placement of the genes on the chips. Something like the organization of genes in the chromosome, the genes on the chip had to be positioned in the right locations, and in the proper relative quantities. This, it turned out, was crucial to the overall orchestration of the complex assembly process. Each time, the scientists would attach a different constellation of genes to the chips, narrowing down the possibilities until they had a composition that could mimic that natural process of subunit production as well as self-assembly. In nature, subunit assembly is a hierarchal process. In the course of their experiments, the scientists were able to break down the assembly to the individual steps to prove that the end result was a self-assembled subunit, and to observe the roles of the chaperones in this process.

Bar-Ziv and Shulman Daube believe that this new insight into producing complex, multi-component structures could pave the way to creating all sorts of other complex, molecular structures - existing ones as well as those not yet found in nature. Thus, for example, structures found in disease-causing bacteria might be produced for the purpose of safely testing and manufacturing drugs, vaccines or diagnostics without using whole, infectious bacteria. In the future, the self-assembly method could lead to the development of new kinds of vaccines, as well as assembly lines for various complex molecules for different industries.

Scientists from the UK, Europe and the USA, including experts from the University of Birmingham, have published a vitamin D consensus paper warning against high doses of vitamin D supplementation.

According to the study, there is currently insufficient scientific evidence to show vitamin D can be beneficial in preventing or treating Covid-19. Its authors advise that the population adhere to Public Health England guidance on supplementation.

Following unverified reports that high doses of vitamin D (higher than 4000IU/d) could reduce the risk of contracting Covid-19 and be used to successfully treat the virus, the new report published in the journal BMJ, Nutrition, Prevention and Health, investigated the current scientific evidence base on the vitamin and its use in treating infections. Vitamin D is a hormone, produced in the skin during exposure to sunlight, and helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body, which are needed to keep bones, teeth and muscles healthy.

Professor Sue Lanham-New, Head of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Surrey and lead author of the study, said: “An adequate level of vitamin D in the body is crucial to our overall health, too little can lead to rickets or the development of osteoporosis but too much can lead to an increase in calcium levels in the blood which could be particularly harmful.”

Examining previous studies in this field scientists found no evidence of a link between high dose supplementation of vitamin D in helping to prevent or successfully treat Covid-19 and cautioned against over supplementation of the vitamin, without medical supervision, due to health risks. Scientists concluded that assertions about the benefit of the vitamin in treating the virus are not currently supported by adequate human studies and are based on findings from studies that did not specifically examine this area.

Claims of a link between vitamin D levels and respiratory tract infections were also examined by scientists. Previous studies in this area have found that lower vitamin D status is associated with acute respiratory tract infections however limitations of the findings of these studies were identified. Findings from the majority of studies were based on data gathered from population groups in developing countries and cannot be extrapolated to populations from more developed countries due to external factors. Scientists believe that there is currently no firm link between vitamin D intake and resistance to respiratory tract infections.

Professors Carolyn Greig and Martin Hewison from Birmingham University, are co-authors on the paper. Professor Greig says: “Most of our vitamin D comes from exposure to sunlight, however for many people, particularly those who are self-isolating with limited access to sunlight during the current pandemic, getting enough vitamin D may be a real challenge. Supplementing with vitamin D is recommended but should be done under the current UK guidance.

“Although there is some evidence that low vitamin D is associated with acute respiratory tract infections, there is currently insufficient evidence for vitamin D as a treatment for COVID-19 and over-supplementing must be avoided as it could be harmful.”

Professor Judy Buttriss, Director General British Nutrition Foundation and also a co-author of the paper said: “In line with the latest Public Health England guidance on vitamin D, we recommend that people consider taking a vitamin D supplement of 10 micrograms a day during the winter months (from October to March), and all year round if their time outside is limited.

“Levels of the vitamin in the body can also be supplemented through a nutritionally balanced diet including foods that provide the vitamin, such as oily fish, red meat, egg yolk and fortified foods such as breakfast cereals, and safe sunlight exposure to boost vitamin D status.”

A group of scientists from Osaka University, in cooperation with Kaneka Corporation, evaluated the interplanar bond strength of graphene by measuring the elastic constant of graphite, demonstrating that the elastic constant of monocrystalline graphite (Figure 1, top) was above 45 gigapascal (GPa), which was higher than conventionally believed. Their research results were published in Physical Review Materials.

Graphite consists of layers of graphene and the layers are bonded via weak van der Waals (vdW) forces, a ubiquitous attraction between all molecules. It was believed that the elastic constant of graphite crystal did not exceed 40 GPa.

This is because the elastic constants obtained from experiments using artificial highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) were low due to structural defects in the graphite (as exemplified in Figure 1, bottom) and theoretical calculations also demonstrated that the elastic constant of graphite was less than 39 GPa.

Since a direct characteristic of an interplanar interaction is the elastic constant along the c axis of graphite, which reflects the interlayer bond strength, the elastic constant of graphite has been used to validate proposed theoretical approaches, and its accurate measurement is critical to thoroughly understanding vdW interactions.

In this study, Kaneka Corporation created a high-quality defect-free monocrystalline graphite by heating high orientation polyimide thin films at high temperatures; however, it was very difficult to measure the elastic constant of this crystal (10 μm in diameter, 1μm in thickness) along the thickness direction.

Thus, in order to experimentally obtain the elastic constant of graphite, using picosecond laser ultrasound spectroscopy, this group applied a laser of 1μm in diameter to the surface of a multilayered graphene for one 10 trillionth of a second to generate ultra-high frequency ultrasound. By accurately measuring the longitudinal wave sound velocity along the thickness direction, they obtained the elastic constant.

Although it had been thought that the interplanar bond strength of graphite was very weak, the results of this study showed that it had a strong bond strength: the elastic constant was nearly 50 GPa, which cannot be explained by conventional theories.

In this study, the short-range correlation effect selectively strengthened the potential energy surface (PES). This anharmonic PES enhanced the elastic constant of graphite. Using the ACFDT-RPA+U method, they demonstrated that the elastic constant reached 50 GPa due to the short-range correlation effect.

Lead author KUSAKABE Koichi says, "Our research group shows that graphite exhibits its superiority in a highly crystalline state. We have created high-quality, high-crystallinity graphite, which has stronger interplanar bond strength than previously believed. Applying ultrasonic measurement techniques to this defect-free monocrystalline graphite thin film will lead to the production of highly sensitive sensors for identifying biological matter such as proteins in non-destructive testing."

MEDIA ADVISORY

Bottom Line: Lower levels of ACE2 nasal gene expression in children may explain why children have a lower risk of Covid-19 infection and mortality. The SARS-CoV-2 virus uses ACE2 to enter the host. ACE2 nasal gene expression could potentially be used as a biomarker to evaluate Covid-19 susceptibility.

Results: ACE2 gene expression in nasal epithelium, the first point of contact for SARS-CoV-2 and the human body, was lowest in younger children and increased with age.

How: A retrospective analysis of 305 patients aged 4 to 60 years encountered within the Mount Sinai Health System in New York.

Study Conclusions: These findings could help explain why children appear to be less susceptible to Covid-19 infection. The results may point to a potential biomarker of Covid-19 susceptibility. Prospective studies are needed to assess the degree to which ACE2 expression can be used as a biomarker for COVID-19 susceptibility.

Publication

Nasal Gene Expression of Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 in Children and Adults

JAMA. Published online May 20, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.8707

"Why children get COVID-19 less than adults has been a puzzle. Researchers have hypothesized that lower expression of ACE2, which the SARS-Cov-2 virus uses to enter our bodies, might explain why children are less likely to get COVID-19. Our study shows that ACE2 expression in the nasal epithelium is lowest in younger children and increases with age into adulthood. Our results may help explain why children account for less than 2% of identified cases of Covid-19. A biomarker of COVID-19 susceptibility based on ACE2 expression might be possible," said Mount Sinai's Dr. Supinda Bunyavanich of the research

Scientists from the Antibody and Vaccine group at the University of Southampton have discovered a way to transform antibody drugs previously developed to treat autoimmunity into antibodies with powerful anti-cancer activity through a simple molecular "switch".

This work, published in the journal Cancer Cell, focuses on a molecule called CD40 which is present on the surface of immune cells and controls both autoimmunity and cancer. In autoimmunity, CD40 is thought to be over-stimulated, increasing the chance of the immune system attacking healthy tissues; whereas in cancer, CD40 is believed to be under-stimulated, enabling tumour cells to evade the immune system. Targeting of CD40 with antibody drugs is ongoing in therapeutic interventions for both diseases.

Accordingly, antibody drugs have been developed to either activate (agonists) or suppress (antagonists) the CD40 immune pathway. Researchers at the Centre for Cancer Immunology in Southampton, led by Professors Mark Cragg and Martin Glennie now reveal that an antagonist CD40 antibody can be transformed into an agonist by simply modifying the "constant" domain of the antibody. The antagonist-turned agonist "trick" was shown for three different antagonists, being driven by the hinge part of the constant domain that controls the flexibility of the antibody. One of these antibodies, was shown to be a "super"-agonist that could stimulate the immune system and cure cancer more effectively in preclinical models than the best CD40-targeting antibody currently in clinical trial.

"Being able to toggle between an autoimmune drug and a cancer medicine with a simple switch is really exciting." said Dr Xiaojie Yu, first author of the study. "We gained a deeper understanding of the mechanism through which CD40 becomes activated, and eagerly look forward to applying this technology to more drug candidates."

"Our findings build on a history of CD40 research here in Southampton and were surprising and exciting in equal measure," said Professor Mark Cragg, senior author of the study. "Taking an antibody that suppresses the immune system and turning it on its head, to activate the immune system for cancer through a relatively simple process is unprecedented. More than that, the same approach could be used for other immune targets and we look forward to seeing testing this in the near future".

May 20, 2020, Alexandria, Va.-- The June 2020 issue of Journal of Dental Research brings together a collection of the latest research on the oral microbiome. This issue includes reviews and reports of new tools for analyzing microbial communities and for cultivating microbial species.

"Through much of the 20th Century, bacteria and other microorganisms were considered to exist predominantly as single cells with independent lifestyles," said Wenyuan Shi, JDR Special Issue guest editor; CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of the Forsyth Institute. "However, we've learned that from environment to agriculture to energy to healthcare, these microbial communities have deep connections with everything that matters to us, including being the "special extra organ" that lives and grows with our bodies."

The papers in this issue highlight the rapid progress that has been made over the last decade in understanding the dynamics of the human oral microbiome. Topics include:

Reviews and reports of new tools for analyzing microbial communities and for cultivating microbial species, including new members of the Saccharibacteria and other difficult-to-culture taxa

The oral microbiome in animal models with a view to understanding the stability of the microbiome and responses to periodontitis

The structural and functional characteristics of the human oral microbiome in connection with dental caries, periodontitis or medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw

Evidence that the oral microbiome is involved in oral cancer and diabetes mellitus

"This issue is a major contribution to the Oral Microbiome field," Shi continued. "The key goal of the next era of oral microbiome research will be to translate the detailed understanding of the system into practical solutions for predicting, preventing or treating oral microbial diseases."

Rice has always been the most important food in Asia and the world. About half of the population on earth use rice as their main food source. The origin, spread, evolution, and ecological adaptation of cultivated rice are still one of the most important issues which currently concerned by global archaeologists, biologists, and agricultural scientists.

In recent years, archaeobotany and molecular biology studies have shown the originally cultivated rice was domesticated into japonica rice (Oryza sativa japonica) in the lower Yangtze region, China, 10000 years ago, then spread to Japan, South and Southeast Asia. About 5000-4000 years ago, the cultivated japonica rice spread to South Asia, hybridized with the native wild rice, gradually form the indica rice (Oryza sativa indica) and become the main crop in South Asia today.

However, in recent years, research on the origin and spread of rice have mainly focused on East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. At present, we still know very little about when and how rice spread into West Asia, Europe, and Africa. The Central Asia region, as an important node in the ancient Silk Road cannot be ignored, because it is the "crossroad" of world civilization. Therefore, studying the time and location of rice emergence in Central Asia can help us restore the spread process about of rice agriculture and add an important part for the early crop globalization research.

Recently, Li Xiaoqiang research group in Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP, CAS) and other researchers in College of Cultural Heritage, Northwest University, China, Institute of Archaeology, Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences reported their latest research about the agricultural remain in Khalchayan site, Uzbekistan, which published in the Science China: Earth Science. Researchers investigated 11 sites on the northern bank of the Amu Darya from Bronze Age to Arabian period and found carbonized rice remain at Kalchayan site. With archaeobotany, chronology method and other local archaeological records, researchers provide a new physical evidence for the spread of rice to western Asia and the exchange of eastern and western civilizations along the ancient Silk Road.

Khalchayan site is a city site in southeastern Uzbekistan. Researchers use flotation method obtain large amount of botanical materials at a cultural layer in southwest part of the site. The AMS 14C dating results showed that the age of the rice remains in the site are 1714-1756 cal. B.P., which in Kushan period. In addition to the rice remains, carbonized wheat, 2-row barley, pea, millet, grapes, flax and other crops were recovered at the site. These crops include both West Asian and East Asian origin, which illustrates a diverse and complex oasis farming system. Because rice cultivation requires a lot of heat and water then wheat and millet, make it difficult to cultivate in arid regions in early times. But combining the carbonized rice remains with the records of the irrigation system existing in other local oases agricultural archeological sites during Kushan period, researchers believe it has the possibility of cultivation rice locally during that time.

Morphological studies show that the carbonized rice remains are japonica rice, and their morphology is similar to the remains found in some sites in southern China and northwestern India during the same period. That indicating the possibility of rice in Central Asia was spread from South Asia. Meanwhile, when rice appeared in Central Asia, Kushan Empire has already established in northwest India and conquered most part of Central Asia and South Asia. The imperial expansion and political unrest may have further fueled the dispersal of crops across Inner Asia. The emergence of rice may also indicate the beginning of the rice-based diet culture gradual integration with the local wheat-based diet system in Central Asia and finally form Central Asia diet system today, like baked dough (Naan), pilaf and barbecue.

The rice remains in Khalchayan site is the first well reported rice remain in Central Asia. It is also one of the few ancient cultivated rice found without in East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. It has a great value for further understanding the exchange process of the early agricultural activities in the Southern Himalayan route, and also provided a new evidence to explain how rice further spreads westward to Iran, Europe, and Africa, where rice cultivation activities exist today.

Hundreds of new links have been found between people's DNA and the heart's electrical activity, according to a study of almost 300,000 people led by researchers at Queen Mary University of London and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

The results could one day lead to advanced screening methods to discern who is at greatest risk of developing disease, and could help reveal new genetic targets for research and drug development.

Over the past 10 years, researchers have identified many genetic factors that contribute to--or protect against--the onset of specific heart diseases. However, it has been difficult to find genetic factors associated with arrhythmias - one of the most common forms of heart disease where the heart beats abnormally.

The team of scientists from more than 140 institutions looked at data from 293,051 people across the world, studying their individual genomes and their measurements on an electrocardiogram - one of the oldest and most widely used heart diagnostic tests.

The investigators specifically studied the length of time between two points on the electrocardiogram read-out known as the 'PR interval', which is associated with a number of common electrical disorders such as atrial fibrillation and other arrhythmias.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, report 202 locations in the genome with links to this type of electrical activity in the heart--141 of which had not been previously identified. This more than triples the number of known genetic regions linked to this type of electrical activity and explains about 62 percent of its heritability.

Co-lead researcher Professor Patricia Munroe from Queen Mary's William Harvey Research Institute said: "This is the largest global study of its kind to investigate the genetic basis of the PR interval - a well-established electrocardiogram risk marker for heart disease and mortality. The insights provide new knowledge on biological processes relating to the heart's electrical activity and potential avenues of drug research for preventing and treating heart conditions."

Steven Lubitz from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute added: "That's really a striking discovery that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. But thanks to many studies, including the UK Biobank, we now have all this imaging and electrocardiogram data paired with genetic data, which has proven to be a really powerful combination."

The findings indicate that an individual's inherited predisposition to heart disease is not the result of single-gene mutations, but rather a cumulative effect of many variants across the genome.

DALLAS – May 21, 2020 – A new cooling insole developed by UT Southwestern scientists reduced the foot temperature of patients with diabetic neuropathy by several degrees, diminishing a significant risk factor for diabetic foot ulcers. This new device, detailed in an article published online ahead of print May 6 in The Journal of Foot & Ankle Surgery, could eventually prevent thousands of amputations that take place worldwide each year because of this condition.

Just in the U.S., more than 100,000 lower extremity amputations take place every year, many of them prompted by diabetic foot ulcers. These ulcers are associated with numerous quality-of-life and health consequences, including a mortality rate of 50 percent within five years for patients who develop them. Although the exact cause of this common diabetes complication is unclear, high foot pressure has long been considered a prevailing cause. Consequently, the most prescribed preventive treatment for diabetic foot ulcers is pressure-relieving insoles.

However, says Metin Yavuz, D.Eng., an associate professor in the School of Health Professions’ Division of Prosthetics and Orthotics at UT Southwestern Medical Center, this prophylactic intervention isn’t accomplishing its goal, since diabetic amputation rates have been on the rise despite widely available pressure-reliving insoles. “Even when patients receive therapeutic shoes and insoles, education, and close monitoring,” he says, “30 to 40 percent of patients who have had one diabetic foot ulcer will still develop another within a year.”

Hoping to decrease these numbers, Yavuz and his colleagues focused on another risk factor for these ulcers: foot temperature. Animal studies have shown that skin maintained between 25 and 30 degrees C is less likely to break down under pressure than skin at higher temperatures. The feet of diabetic patients already tend to be warmer due to inflammation associated with the disease, Yavuz explains, compounded by friction from walking and the stiff therapeutic shoes that patients wear, which are usually made of synthetic materials that act as heat insulators.

“We thought, why don’t we break that vicious cycle by cooling the foot?” he says.

To do that, Yavuz and his lab, aided by a pilot grant from UTSW’s Center for Translational Medicine, developed a system that circulates cool water into pressure-relieving insoles. The device, which the researchers named Temperature and Pressure Monitoring and Regulating Insoles (TAPMARI), consists of a small box strapped to the wearer’s calf that houses a cooling unit, a small water pump, a battery pack, and a thermostat. The cooling unit harnesses a type of thermoelectric cooling called the Peltier effect to chill water to a desired temperature that’s then pumped into insoles placed in the wearer’s shoes. Yavuz later teamed up with the engineering company Vivonics Inc. and obtained funding from the National Institutes of Health to improve the design.

The researchers tested the improved device in eight volunteers: one man and seven women of a median age of 45 years. Five of these volunteers were healthy and three had diabetic neuropathy.

Using an infrared thermal camera, the researchers took photos of the subjects’ feet at baseline before wearing the insoles, then placed a cooling insole in only their right shoes. They took more thermal photos after the subjects walked five minutes on a treadmill and again after they wore the insoles an additional two hours and walked five minutes on the treadmill again.

Results showed that the mean baseline foot temperature in the group was 28.1 degrees C. Mean foot temperatures at the end of the study were 31.7 degrees C for the left foot and 25.9 degrees C for the right, which was cooled by TAPMARI. Although the diabetics’ feet got warmer than those of the healthy volunteers during walking, they still maintained a mean temperature of 27.5 degrees C in the right foot, suggesting that the insoles could maintain temperature in a range that protects against skin breakdown.

Cool temperatures from the insoles didn’t cause vasoconstriction (narrowing of blood vessels) in the foot, which could have damaged tissue, Yavuz says. However, sole temperatures reached as high as 30.8 degrees C in some regions of the cooled feet, particularly in the midfoot, suggesting that the design of the insole needs to be improved. Other design elements could also be tweaked, he says, such as reducing the size of the unit worn on the calf.

Eventually, Yavuz says, these devices could change the course for patients with diabetes, preventing this common and often serious complication.

“Diabetic foot ulcers can be a major burden on patients, their families, caregivers, and the health system,” he says. “What we’re doing now to prevent these ulcers or simply maintain the status quo isn’t working. TAPMARI could be the start of a whole new approach.”

Other researchers who contributed to this study include Ali Ersen and Lawrence A. Lavery of UTSW; Aakshita Monga and Yasser Salem of the University of North Texas Health Science Center; Alan Garrett of the John Peter Smith Hospital; and Gordon B. Hirschman and Ryan Myers of Vivonics Inc.

We often think of asteroids and comets as distinct types of small bodies, but astronomers have discovered an increasing number of "crossovers." These objects initially appear to be asteroids, and later develop activity, such as tails, that are typical of comets.

Now, the University of Hawai'i Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) has discovered the first known Jupiter Trojan asteroid to have sprouted a comet-like tail. ATLAS is a NASA-funded project using wide-field telescopes to rapidly scan the sky for asteroids that might pose an impact threat to Earth. But by searching most of the sky every two nights, ATLAS often finds other kinds of objects - objects that aren't dangerous, but are very interesting.

Early in June 2019, ATLAS reported what seemed to be a faint asteroid near the orbit of Jupiter. The Minor Planet Center designated the new discovery as 2019 LD2. Inspection of ATLAS images taken on June 10 by collaborators Alan Fitzsimmons and David Young at Queen's University Belfast revealed its probable cometary nature. Follow-up observations by UH astronomer J.D. Armstrong and his student Sidney Moss on June 11 and 13 using the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) global telescope network confirmed the cometary nature of this body.

Later, in July 2019, new ATLAS images caught 2019 LD2 again - now truly looking like a comet, with a faint tail made of dust or gas. The asteroid passed behind the Sun and was not observable from the Earth in late 2019 and early 2020, but upon its reappearance in the night sky in April of 2020, routine ATLAS observations confirmed that it still looks like a comet. These observations showed that 2019 LD2 has probably been continuously active for almost a year.

While ATLAS has discovered more than 40 comets, what makes this object extraordinary is its orbit. The early indication that it was an asteroid near Jupiter's orbit have now been confirmed through precise measurements from many different observatories. In fact, 2019 LD2 is a special kind of asteroid called a Jupiter Trojan - and no object of this type has ever before been seen to spew out dust and gas like a comet.

Trojan asteroids follow the same orbit as a planet, but stay either around 60 degrees ahead or 60 degrees behind along the orbit. Earth has at least one Trojan asteroid, and Neptune has dozens. Jupiter has hundreds of thousands. The Jupiter Trojan asteroids orbit the Sun in two huge swarms, one swarm orbiting ahead of the planet (where 2019 LD2 was found) and one swarm orbiting behind it. The Trojan asteroids have been captured into these orbits by Jupiter's strong gravity. What makes 2019 LD2 so interesting is that we think most Jupiter Trojans were captured billions of years ago. Any surface ice that could vaporize to spew out gas and dust should have done so long ago, leaving the objects quietly orbiting as asteroids - not behaving like comets.

"We have believed for decades that Trojan asteroids should have large amounts of ice beneath their surfaces, but never had any evidence until now. ATLAS has shown that the predictions of their icy nature may well be correct" said Fitzsimmons.

What could have made 2019 LD2 suddenly show cometary behavior? Maybe Jupiter captured it only recently from a more distant orbit where surface ice could still survive. Maybe it recently suffered a landslide or an impact from another asteroid, exposing ice that used to be buried under layers of protective rock. New observations to find out are being acquired and evaluated. What's certain is that the Universe is full of surprises - and surveys to guard the Earth from dangerous asteroids often make unexpected discoveries of harmless but fascinating objects that can reveal more about our Solar System's history.

"Even though the ATLAS system is designed to search for dangerous asteroids, ATLAS sees other rare phenomena in our solar system and beyond while scanning the sky," said ATLAS project principal investigator Larry Denneau. "It's a real bonus for ATLAS to make these kinds of discoveries."

A Monash University study has uncovered the role DNA repair plays in preserving egg quality, offering hope for women whose eggs may be damaged through treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy.

The study, led by Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI), found that when the cell death pathway is inhibited in oocytes (eggs) these eggs are capable of repairing severe DNA damage sufficiently to produce healthy offspring.

By exposing female mice deficient in TAp63, a key regulator of cell death in eggs, to various doses of gamma irradiation, it was observed that the oocytes will rapidly repair the DNA damage to maintain oocyte quality and female fertility.

Findings published in the medical journal PNAS, led by Associate Professor Karla Hutt and Dr Jessica Stringer, outline that among the many types of DNA damage, double-strand breaks (DSBs) are the most harmful and promote chromosome rearrangements and mutations and lead to genetic instability if the DSBs are repaired incorrectly.

"Women are born with their lifetime supply of eggs, which makes them one of the longest living cells in the human body. This means that eggs are exposed to years of external and internal stressors that may damage the DNA and contribute to the reduced oocyte quality in women over 35 years of age. We have identified the DNA repair pathway that oocytes use to repair DSBs and confirmed that repair is efficient and accurate to prevent mutations in offspring generated from these eggs," Associate Professor Hutt said.

Unlike other cells in the human body, oocytes have an extremely low tolerance for DNA damage and will activate cell death pathways when exposed to the stressors of things like radiation, chemotherapeutic drugs, and environmental toxins (e.g. pollution, pesticides). Blocking oocyte death is being actively investigated as one of the most promising methods to preserve future fertility and endocrine health in female cancer patients.

"Cancer treatments work by causing DNA damage, and a common side effect for female patients is ovarian damage which can lead to infertility and loss of endocrine function (such as early onset menopause). This study provides a fundamental step towards developing a truly effective fertility preservation strategy for female cancer patients and has important implications for prolonging women's fertile lifespan," Dr Stringer said.

With survival rates for many common cancers now exceeding 80 per cent, and an estimated population of 14 million female cancer survivors world-wide, there is a clear need to develop innovative approaches to protect the ovary from damage during anti-cancer treatment.

Moreover, in Australia, 20 per cent of women have their first child after 35 years of age, an age at which fertility plummets and rates of miscarriage and birth defects increase dramatically. This striking maternal age effect is due to loss of oocyte quality and possibly diminished DNA repair capacity.

Liver cancer is one of the deadliest cancers. It is insidious and does not present symptoms until it has progressed considerably, at which point, treatment options are limited and chances of survival are low. The most common type of liver cancer is hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HCC is most frequently seen in patients with chronic liver conditions such as hepatitis B or C and cirrhosis, and it takes the lion's share in mortality rates from liver cancer.

Over the past two decades or so, research on liver cancer and cancer in general has advanced with great strides. Scientists have found that all cancer cells for a particular type of cancer are not alike. Among a set of cancer cells, there is a rare subset of cells called cancer stem cells (CSCs) which function similarly to normal stem cells in that they are what cause cancer cells to form, renew, and proliferate. In a cancer patient, if you resected a tumor and removed all other cancer cells but left CSCs alive, the CSCs would cause the cancer to grow back. CSCs are what sustain the cancer.

But what causes CSCs to form? Research posits that normal stem cells mutate into CSCs under specific body environmental and/or genetic conditions. However, in the case of the liver, until recently, studies were yet to confirm the particular conditions and triggers for this conversion to CSCs, and whether these are environmental or genetic or both.

Now, for the first time, a group of scientists from Okayama University, led by Professor Masaharu Seno and Said Mohamed Abdelsabour Afify, has been able to develop CSCs from a type of normal stem cells by merely exposing them to what are believed to be favorable body environmental conditions, without introducing any mutations or foreign genes. "This is the world's first successful establishment of a liver CSC model from normal iPSCs without genetic manipulation," Prof. Seno remarks.

Normal iPSCs, or normal induced pluripotent stem cells, are a type of stem cell that can regenerate to develop into any type of human tissue, given the right conditions. In their laboratory, Prof. Seno and team placed iPSCs obtained from mice in a conditioned medium of HCC cell lines (comprising a type of liver-cancer derived cells called Huh7 cells). These Huh7 cells secreted chemicals that cause inflammation, creating an environment mimicking chronic inflammation in the liver. This was expected to trigger the conversion of the iPSCs to liver CSCs.

To find out whether this conversion occurred, the scientists had to evaluate in vivo whether the resultant cells formed malignant tumors. So, they injected the cells into the livers of immunodefficient mice. With high efficiency, after only 28 days of injection, the livers had developed malignant tumors. In contrast, untreated iPSCs gave rise to teratoma-like tumors with various germ layers, which were benign. Observation and chemical assays revealed that a considerable proportion of the cells of the malignant tumors had high nuclear-to-cytoplasmic ratios and high proliferation rates. Further, in these cells, liver cancer-associated markers such as alpha fetoprotein, glypican 3 and carcinoembryonic antigen, were expressed. Thus, the cells they had managed to develop from the iPSCs were not only confirmed CSCs, but also confirmed liver CSCs.

This work shows that liver CSCs could be born from normal stem cells in an environment of chronic inflammation without genetic mutation. It also provides a model for how liver cancer cells could be metastasizing. A model is a prerequisite for further scientific study. With the model that this study establishes, more targeted drugs could be developed and tested and perhaps, prevention techniques, such as tailored diets, can be discovered.

The scientists plan to test their model using human-tissue-derived iPSCs in future and adapt it to other human tissues in addition to liver tissue. Speaking of his vision, Prof. Seno says: "The results of further investigations will make liver cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment surer and surer. Finally, one day, the number of liver cancer patients in the world will reduce and the complete treatment of liver cancer will be possible." The journey to the future that Prof. Seno envisions, begins here.

Chinese researchers from The Trauma Center of Peking University People's Hospital and National Institute of Health Data Science at Peking University are using big data to help identify trauma patients who could experience potential adverse health events in the emergency department through the aid of a clinical decision support system. It was developed using a novel real-world evidence mining and evidence-based inference method, driven by improved information storage and electronic medical records.

The researchers published their results online on February 7 in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. This is the first clinical decision support systems developed using evidential reasoning in an emergency department setting.

"Appropriate use of information technologies, particularly clinical decision support systems, may aid clinicians to make better clinical decisions and reduce the rate of medical errors," said the corresponding author Prof. Baoguo Jiang, Director of The Trauma Center of Peking University People's Hospital and China's National Center for Trauma Medicine. "By inputting clinical data of a patient, combined with available historical data, our proposed clinical decision support system outputs a predicted belief degree of severe trauma, including ICU admission and in-hospital death."

"The clinical variable signs and symptoms may be interrelated and lead to a clinical outcome. For example, a patient may have low level of consciousness because of the location of the injury, or it might be related to the high body temperature". In developing their clinical decision support system, the researchers used a trauma dataset from the emergency department at Kailuan Hospital in China, a hospital that has a close research collaboration with The Trauma Center of Peking University People's Hospital. Through the dataset, the researchers obtained the data of 1,299 trauma patients. The degree of interdependence between clinical signs and symptoms can be calculated from historical patient data. In the proposed clinical decision support system, the emergency room physician supplies information about the patient, including blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration rate, consciousness level, body temperature, age, comorbidities, mechanism and location of injury. These clinical signs and symptoms are then processed using an evidential reasoning rule, which compares each piece against the evidence mined from real-world data to predict the probability of adverse events and to optimally manage trauma patients and help them achieve ideal outcomes, trauma patients with a high probability of being admitted to the intensive care unit or dying in hospital need to be identified quickly and accurately upon their arrival at a hospital.

The team found that not only did their model prove especially useful in cases without prior expert knowledge or clinical experiences, but that the clinical decision support system also allowed for more accurate identification of trauma patients with adverse events compared to other systems with traditional machine learning models. Furthermore, the clinical decision support system works in a real-time fashion. From a physician's input of a patient's data to generating appropriate advices, the system works almost without any delay, which in turn helps buy trauma patients valuable time.

Next, the researchers plan to finetune their system and to generalize it for use in other clinical areas and non-emergent department settings.

Many insects' breathing pores open and close rapidly during respiration; oxygen diffusion analysis suggests that this spiracle fluttering enables high oxygen intake and low water loss, according to a study publishing May 20, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by H. Frederik Nijhout and Michael C. Reed of Duke University, USA, and Sean D. Lawley of the University of Utah, USA.