MDS is linked to a number of different gene mutations and considered one of the most complex malignancies affecting blood-making hematopoietic stem cells in bone marrow, according to Gang Huang, Ph.D., a cancer biologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He is the lead investigator of a new study in the journal Cancer Discovery. It identifies a gene that in laboratory experiments fuels the biological processes that cause the different types of MDS that physicians see in patients....

The 1902 oil painting, owned by the AGO in Toronto, Canada, depicts a crouching and cloaked woman, painted in white, blues, grays, and greens. With knowledge of an underlying landscape revealed long ago by X-ray radiography at the AGO, researchers used non-invasive portable imaging techniques, including infrared reflectance hyperspectral imaging adapted by the National Gallery of Art and then an X-ray fluorescence imaging instrument developed at Northwestern, to detail buried images connected to other works by Picasso — including a watercolor recently sold at auction — as well as the presence of a landscape likely by another Barcelona painter underneath “La Miséreuse accroupie....

The body appears to switch the type of cell that produces a single growth factor during healthy times and during stress or injury — for instance, radiation treatment for cancer. The results could have implications for treating cancer, when people’s blood-forming stem cells may be substantially depleted, and for people undergoing certain types of transplants. The study, led by Dr. John Chute, a member of the center and a professor of hematology/oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, was published in the journal Cell Stem Cell....

The Galápagos archipelago, rising from the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean some 900 kilometers off the South American mainland, is an iconic and globally significant biological hotspot. The islands are renowned for their unique wealth of endemic species, which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and today underpins one of the largest UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Marine Reserves on Earth. Scientists have known for decades that the regional ecosystem is sustained by the upwelling of cool, nutrient-rich deep waters, which fuel the growth of the phytoplankton upon which the entire ecosystem thrives....

“These types of volcanic eruptions happen all over the world, but they don’t usually produce islands. We had an incredibly unique opportunity,” said Nick Dragone, CIRES Ph.D. student and lead author of the study recently published in mBio. “No one had ever comprehensively studied the microorganisms on this type of island system at such an early stage before.” “Studying the microbes that first colonize islands provides a glimpse into the earliest stage of ecosystem development – before even plants and animals arrive,” said Noah Fierer, CIRES fellow, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at CU Boulder and corresponding author on the study....

Whales undertake some of the longest migrations on earth, often swimming many thousands of miles, over many months, to breed in the tropics. The question is why—is it to find food, or to give birth? In a research paper published in Marine Mammal Science, scientists propose that whales that forage in polar waters migrate to low latitudes to maintain healthy skin. “I think people have not given skin molt due consideration when it comes to whales, but it is an important physiological need that could be met by migrating to warmer waters,” said Robert Pitman, lead author of the new paper and marine ecologist with Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute....

But in the seas, a colorful population of marine bivalves–the group including oysters, clams, and scallops–soldiered on, tucked into the crevices of ocean floors and shorelines. Though they also lost half their species, curiously, at least one species in each ecological niche survived. University of Chicago scientists documented this surprising trend in a study on extinctions published January 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Though the mass extinction wiped out staggeringly high numbers of species, they barely touched the overall “functional” diversity–how each species makes a living, be it filtering phytoplankton or eating small crustaceans, burrowing or clamping onto rocks....

The scientists, from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB), found that the chances for life to develop on the surface of a rocky planet like Earth are connected to the type and strength of light given off by its host star. Their study, published in the journal Science Advances, proposes that stars which give off sufficient ultraviolet (UV) light could kick-start life on their orbiting planets in the same way it likely developed on Earth, where the UV light powers a series of chemical reactions that produce the building blocks of life....

The researchers found that myoglobin increased the proliferation and metabolic activity of bovine muscle satellite cells. Addition of either myoglobin or hemoglobin also led to a change of color more comparable to beef. The results, published on October 21, 2019, in FOODS, indicate the potential benefits of adding heme proteins to cell media to improve the color and texture of cell-grown meat. “Taste, color, and texture will be critical to consumer acceptance of cultured meat,” said David Kaplan, Stern Family Professor of Engineering at the Tufts University School of Engineering and corresponding author of the study....

When we navigate our environment, two important cell types are active in our brains. Place cells in the hippocampus and grid cells in the neighboring entorhinal cortex form a circuit that allows orientation and navigation. The team of scientists suggests that our inner navigation system does much more. They propose that this system is also key to ‘thinking’, explaining why our knowledge seems to be organized in a spatial fashion....

In the world of quantum computing, interaction is everything. For computers to work at all, bits — the ones and zeros that make up digital information — must be able to interact and hand off data for processing. The same goes for the quantum bits, or qubits, that make up quantum computers. But that interaction creates a problem — in any system in which qubits interact with each other, they also tend to want to interact with their environment, resulting in qubits that quickly lose their quantum nature....

Scientists studying neutrinos have found with the highest degree of sensitivity yet that these mysterious particles behave like other elementary particles at the quantum level. The results shed light on the mass and other properties of the neutrino and prove the effectiveness of a new instrument that will yield even greater discoveries in this area. The Enriched Xenon Observatory 200 (EXO-200), an international collaboration led by Stanford University and the U....

Barrels and cones dot an open field in Saline, Michigan, forming an obstacle course for a modified vehicle. A driver remotely steers the vehicle through the course from a nearby location as a researcher looks on. Occasionally, the researcher instructs the driver to keep the wheel straight — a trajectory that appears to put the vehicle on a collision course with a barrel. Despite the driver’s actions, the vehicle steers itself around the obstacle, transitioning control back to the driver once the danger has passed....

A research team conducted experiments on the serial dependence of number perception using coins, to see if serial perception bias occurred in lower-order perceptual or higher-order perceptual and cognitive processing. The team was led by Professor Shogo Makioka from the Osaka Metropolitan University Graduate School of Sustainable System Sciences. Experiments were conducted in which between 8 to 32 Japanese coins of three types—silver one yen, gold five yen, and copper ten yen—were displayed on screen for half a second....

Learning to navigate social relationships is a skill that is critical for surviving in human societies. For babies and young children, that means learning who they can count on to take care of them. MIT neuroscientists have now identified a specific signal that young children and even babies use to determine whether two people have a strong relationship and a mutual obligation to help each other: whether those two people kiss, share food, or have other interactions that involve sharing saliva....

Human tumors transplanted into laboratory mice disappeared or shrank when scientists treated the animals with a single antibody, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The antibody works by masking a protein flag on cancer cells that protects them from macrophages and other cells in the immune system. The scientists achieved the findings with human breast, ovarian, colon, bladder, brain, liver, and prostate cancer samples....

Biofilms may no longer have any solid ground upon which to stand. A team of Harvard scientists has developed a slick way to prevent the troublesome bacterial communities from ever forming on a surface. Biofilms stick to just about everything, from copper pipes to steel ship hulls to glass catheters. The slimy coatings are more than simply a nuisance, resulting in decreased energy efficiency, contamination of water and food supplies, and — especially in medical settings — persistent infections....

Supernova explosions are among the most powerful events in the universe, with a peak brightness equivalent to the light from billions of individual stars. The explosion also produces a blast wave that destroys almost everything in its path, including dust in the surrounding interstellar medium, the space between the stars. Current theories predict when a supernova blast sweeps through a region of space, much of the dust would be destroyed, so there should be little dust left....

What if a commercial audio speaker could function like an autozoom projector does for light, and you could deliver the sound people want where they want it? Chinmay Rajguru, from the University of Sussex, will discuss his research team’s work creating a sound projector that can deliver spatial sound at a distance by forming a beam of audible sound. The session, “A spatial sound delivery system for virtual and augmented reality,” will take place December 8 at 11:40 a....

NASA Flight Engineers Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough started their day observing mice once again inside the Life Science Glovebox (LSG) located in Japan’s Kibo laboratory module. The space biology study is helping scientists identify genes and observe cell functions that are impacted by weightlessness and affect skin processes. Assisting the duo, ESA (European Space Agency) Thomas Pesquet continued the mice observations during the afternoon. NASA Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei handled the LSG set up and closeout operations during Friday’s experiment work....