UChicago study finds lasofoxifene a promising treatment for resistant breast cancer

How people consume news and take actions based on what they read, hear or see, is different than how human brains process other types of information on a daily basis, according to researchers at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. While the current state of the newspaper industry is in flux, these journalism experts discovered people still love reading newspapers, and they believe a newspaper's physical layout and structure could help curators of digital news platforms enhance their users' experiences. "Many people still love print newspapers, and to an extent, we also see that they like the digital replicas of print newspapers as much as they do the physical version," said Damon Kiesow, a professor of journalism professions and co-author on the study. "But we believe there ...

In a paper published in the May 13th, 2021 issue of PLOS Genetics, a Z-RNA nanoswitch that regulates interferon immune responses is described. The switch, less than 5 nanometer in length, is based on sequences, called flipons, that change outcomes by altering their three dimensional conformation. The Z-RNA nanoswitch flips from the shorter right-handed A-RNA helix ("on") to the longer left-handed Z-RNA helix ("off"). The flip ends immune responses against self RNAs, but not against viruses. Surprisingly, the Z-RNA nanoswitch sequence is encoded by "junk DNA". The Z-RNA nanoswitch is used by some cancers to silence anti-tumor immune responses. In other cases, a malfunction of the Z-RNA nanoswitch causes inflammatory disease. In the ...

A new strategy for capturing the 3D shape of the human face draws on data from sibling pairs and leads to identification of novel links between facial shape traits and specific locations within the human genome. Hanne Hoskens of the Department of Human Genetics at Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics. The ability to capture the 3D shape of the human face--and how it varies between individuals with different genetics--can inform a variety of applications, including understanding human evolution, planning for surgery, and forensic sciences. ...

Mutations in two genetic regions in dogs explain over one third of the risk of developing an aggressive form of hematological cancer, according to a study led by Jacquelyn Evans and Elaine Ostrander at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Maryland, USA and colleagues. The study, which combined multiple sequencing techniques to investigate histiocytic sarcoma in retriever dogs, publishes May 13 in the open-access journal PLOS Genetics. Histiocytic sarcoma is an aggressive cancer of immune cells, and although extremely rare in humans, it affects around one-in-five flat-coated retrievers. Genome-wide association surveys of 177 affected and 132 unaffected flat-coated ...

A new whole genome sequence for the Yap hadal snailfish provides insights into how the unusual fish survives in some of the deepest parts of the ocean. Xinhua Chen of the Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University and Qiong Shi of the BGI Academy of Marine Sciences published their analysis of the new genome May 13th in the journal PLOS Genetics. Animals living in deep-sea environments face many challenges, including high pressures, low temperatures, little food and almost no light. Fish are the only animals with a backbone that live in the hadal zone--defined as depths below 6,000 meters--and hadal snailfishes live in at least five separate marine trenches. Chen, Shi and their colleagues constructed a high-quality whole genome sequence from the Yap ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) learning machines can be trained to solve problems and puzzles on their own instead of using rules that we made for them. But often, researchers do not know what rules the machines make for themselves. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Assistant Professor Peter Koo developed a new method that quizzes a machine-learning program to figure out what rules it learned on its own and if they are the right ones. Computer scientists "train" an AI machine to make predictions by presenting it with a set of data. The machine extracts a series of rules and operations--a model--based on information it encountered during its training. Koo says: "If you learn general ...

QUT air-quality expert Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska is leading an international call for a "paradigm shift" in combating airborne pathogens such as COVID-19, demanding universal recognition that infections can be prevented by improving indoor ventilation systems. Professor Morawska led a group of almost 40 researchers from 14 countries in a call published in Science for a shift in standards in ventilation requirements equal in scale to the transformation in the 1800s when cities started organising clean water supplies and centralised sewage systems. The international group of air quality researchers called on the World ...

For decades, governments worldwide have invested great deals of legislation and resources in food safety, sanitation and drinking water quality for public health purposes. However, the same cannot be said for the air quality of indoor public spaces, wherein the spread of airborne pathogens - whether those that cause the common cold or COVID-19 - is generally considered to be an "inescapable part of daily life." In a Policy Forum, Lidia Morawska and colleagues argue for a profound shift in how policymakers and building engineers view and approach indoor air quality and health, to reduce the spread of respiratory infection. According to Morawska et al., similarly to how food and waterborne disease ...

A subpopulation of neurons in the brain's zona incerta, or "zone of uncertainty," drives investigatory and novelty-seeking behavior in mice, according to a new study. The findings reveal a previously unknown brain circuit underlying innate curiosity; its discovery may one day have implications as a therapeutic target in animals or people who exhibit novelty-seeking behaviors, authors of a related Perspective say. Although curiosity - the motivational drive to investigate the unknown - is widely considered to be as intrinsic as hunger and thirst, and an ...

Challenging the assumption that watershed streamflow always recovers from drought, a new study done seven years after the "Millennium Drought," the worst drought ever recorded in southeastern Australia, reports that more than a third of the region's affected watersheds had not yet recovered. Of these watersheds that were still dry seven years later, most showed no evidence of recovering soon, despite the rains' return. The new study's findings suggest that hydrological droughts can persist indefinitely after meteorological droughts, highlighting an amplification of climate change impacts that could present additional challenges to the sustainable use of already-threatened water ...