The stripes of the Lesser Pacific Striped Octopus are as unique as our own fingerprints, enabling scientists to track individuals as they grow

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282396 Article Title: Uncomfortably high: Testing reveals inflated THC potency on retail Cannabis labels Author Countries: USA Funding: Headspace Sensory LLC provided funding for purchase of 13 of the 23 Cannabis samples that were included as part of another study [47], but had no other involvement in this study. All other funding was provided by the McGlaughlin Lab at the University of Northern Colorado and by the first author. Mile High Labs provided support for this study in the form of salaries for VJ and JH. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283505 Article Title: The oldest known bat skeletons and their implications for Eocene chiropteran diversification Author Countries: The Netherlands, USA Funding: 1) Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund of the American Museum of Natural History (TBR) https://www.amnh.org/research/richard-gilder-graduate-school/academics-and-research/fellowship-and-grant-opportunities/research-grants-and-graduate-student-exchange-fellowships/roosevelt-memorial-fund 2) ...

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0283465 Article Title: Impact assessment of immunization and the COVID-19 pandemic on varicella across Europe using digital epidemiology methods: A descriptive study Author Countries: Sweden, Lithuania, Ireland, USA, Spain Funding: Funding for this research was provided by Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA (MSD). We confirm that the funder provided support in the form of salaries for Ugne Sabale, Ligita Jarmale, Janice Murtagh, Manjiri Pawaskar, and Goran Bencina, but did not have any additional ...

New research into ancient populations that resided on the Tibetan Plateau has found that dairy pastoralism was being practiced far earlier than previously thought and may have been key to long-term settlement of the region’s extreme environment.  Professor Michael Petraglia, Director of Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, was part of the international research team that set out to understand how prehistoric populations adapted to the vast, agriculturally poor highlands of the Tibetan Plateau.  The research, ...

Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is a lethal pediatric brain cancer that often kills within a year of diagnosis. Surgery is almost impossible because of the tumors’ location. Chemotherapy has debilitating side effects. New treatment options are desperately needed. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Adrian Krainer is best known for his groundbreaking research on antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs)—molecules that can control protein levels in cells. His efforts led to Spinraza®, ...

The Tibetan Plateau, known as the “third pole”, or “roof of the world”, is one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. While positive natural selection at several genomic loci enabled early Tibetans to better adapt to high elevations, obtaining sufficient food from the resource-poor highlands would have remained a challenge.  Now, a new study in the journal Science Advances reveals that dairy was a key component of early human diets on the Tibetan Plateau. The study reports ancient ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an electronic patch that can be applied to the leaves of plants to monitor crops for different pathogens – such as viral and fungal infections – and stresses such as drought or salinity. In testing, the researchers found the patch was able to detect a viral infection in tomatoes more than a week before growers would be able to detect any visible symptoms of disease. “This is important because the earlier growers can identify plant diseases or fungal infections, the ...

Simulated volcanic eruptions may be blowing up our ability to predict near-term climate, according to a new study published in Science Advances.  The research, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), finds that the way volcanic eruptions are represented in climate models may be masking the models’ ability to accurately predict variations in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific that unfold over multiple years to a decade.  These decadal variations in sea surface ...

In coordination with the El Centro Regional Medical Center (ECRMC) Board of Trustees, UC San Diego Health today announced that Pablo Velez, RN, PhD, has been appointed by UC San Diego Health as ECRMC’s chief executive officer effective April 17. Reporting to UC San Diego Health CEO Patty Maysent, Velez will oversee day-to-day operational, clinical and financial management of ECRMC, leading UC San Diego Health’s overall efforts to support the strategic and operational plan that was announced ...

In a large joint project, a total of six research groups from the University of Cologne Cluster of Excellence on Cellular Stress Responses in Age-Associated Diseases (CECAD), the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging (MPI) in Cologne and the University of Göttingen have demonstrated the following findings which apply across the animal kingdom: with increasing age, the transcriptional elongation speed of genes increases, whereby the quality of the gene products suffers. With dietary restrictions, ...