The Y chromosomes can affect the risk of cancer
Why the Y chromosome makes cancers more deadly for men and why it affects the immune system: A case study of fukushima in mice
How the Y chromosome makes some cancers more deadly for men. Plus, what the science says about releasing Fukushima’s wastewater and a ‘duct tape for surgery’ inspired by barnacle glue wins Spinoff Prize.
The Y chromosome may be behind the aggressive colorectal and bladder cancers seen in men and others who carry it. Bladder cancer can be difficult to detect with the immune system due to the loss of the Y chromosomes in some cells. A Y-chromosomeGene in mice increases the risk of colorectal cancers spreading to other parts of the body, when connections between tumours cells are weakened. When the gene was deleted, the tumours were less aggressive and more likely to be detected by immune cells. Together, the studies suggest that genetic factors — not just lifestyle — are responsible for the male bias that many cancers have.
How to get out to Oceangate in time? A marine biologist worries about radioactivity discharges at the crippled Japanese nuclear power plant
Rescuers are trying to figure out what went wrong with the OceanGate vessel that went missing while carrying five passengers to visit the Titanic wreck. Peter says that some of the equipment on the research subs is a safety system. “I’m concerned that they overlooked some of the features that we build into research submersibles, because they struck them as costly or unnecessary, or uninteresting,” he says. It would be a bad idea to send a crewed sub after Titan, but “remotely operated robotic submersibles that work at 6,500 metres would be an ideal asset to get on site”, Girguis suggests. How do you get out to this remote location in the Atlantic in time?
The water from the crippled nuclear power plant in Japan will soon start to be released into the ocean. Sixty-two of the radioactive elements have been removed by treatment, but there are still questions regarding hydrogen-2 and carbon-14. Some scientists think the risks are low. Nuclear power plants usually discharge tritium-contaminated water. Others are concerned that tritium could concentrate in the food web. “Have the people promoting this going forward demonstrated to our satisfaction that it will be safe for ocean health and human health?” asks marine biologist Robert Richmond. The answer is no.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02086-7
What Are We Don’t Know About Sustainable Development Goals? The New Scientists’ Advice on Land Sparing and Biodiversity Conservation
Ian Bateman and Andrew Balmford say that land-sparing is cheaper than other approaches to farming and could help the environment. The most common conservation policies — land sharing, rewilding and organic farming — actually risk accelerating biodiversity loss by offshoring the problem, they argue. The approaches reduce crop yield, which drives up food imports and causes enormous environmental damage overseas. Land sparing involves joining up patches of habitat. The researchers argued that governments need to stop ignoring system-wide impacts to make better policy decisions.
The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are at the heart of an international project that aims to end poverty and achieve equality while protecting the environment. The world leaders set a deadline to achieve the goals. It looks like none of the goals and a little less than 12% of the targets will be met this year. In September, world leaders will gather in New York City to come up with a rescue plan — and scientists are key to its success. A Nature editorial kicks off a series of articles on what needs to be done. The editorial says that if there is still a small chance that we can achieve the goals, then we need to seize it.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02086-7
How French colonizers invaded Devil’s Island to launch a spacecraft: bioinspiration and its impact on medical education, disease and health equity
When Algeria won its hard-fought independence from France, it also ejected the colonizers’ rocket launch site. France went looking for a new location, which had to be conveniently located near the equator. Devil’s Island was a French penal colony in French Guiana. Today the region is home to the Guiana Space Centre, the main spaceport of France and the European Space Agency. Ethonograper Karlijn Korpershoek explores how missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope came to be launched from this South American locale.
Bioadhesive company SanaHeal has won the Spinoff Prize — an award from Nature Research and Merck for early-stage university spin-off companies. Standard bandages don’t stick to some organs. duct tape for surgery sticks and shrinks, pulling cuts closed and adding mechanical reinforcement to promote wound healing. The mechanical engineer-turned-entrepreneur says it is the exact same thing as barnacle glues. That is true bioinspiration. 7 min read.
Health-equity officer Aletha Maybank says that, to repair the institutional systems that produce health inequity, it’s not enough to just measure disease outcomes. It is important to understand people’s experiences. (Nature | 8 min read)
The Science of Reading: Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read during the first global ocean voyage to understand the planet’s blue machine
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes a profound, sparkling global ocean voyage to understand the planet’s ‘blue machine’ and an intriguing analysis of the science of reading.
The scientific community desperately needs pundits to defend science from conspiracy theorists according to the science editor-in-chief. (Science | 3 min read)
The war is far from over, but the Ukrainian government is working on a plan to rebuild science, and moving away from a soviet-era system that gives little power to working scientists. There are challenges related to protecting the existing researchers and tempting those who have left to return. “Without science, Ukraine would be just another mainly agricultural country, and with all the war damage to our ecology, we can’t even hope to come to pre-war export quantities,” says theoretical physicist Oleksiy Kolezhuk, one of the key advisers to the government on reshaping the research system. “How on earth are we going to support ourselves and prosper, if we continue to neglect science?”
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02127-1
The diversity of the Hadza people in Tanzania reflects the lifestyle of hunter-gatherer and city dweller communities in terms of microbiome sequences
The accuracy standard for elemental analysis was no longer used after a study found that it was not scientifically justified. A material’s purity is determined using a chemistry technique called sedonic analysis. Results usually have a tight error margin of 0.4%. This frustrates many researchers who need to ship off samples and pay for high-accuracy results. Almost 9% of samples they sent to 17 laboratories did not meet the standard.
A massive project to sequence the gut-bacteria of hunters, farmers, and city dwellers shows that the Western lifestyle limits the number of different types of gut-bacteria. The microbiomes of the Hadza people — a hunter-gatherer society in northern Tanzania — have more than twice as many species as those of Californians. In Nepal, farmers and foragers seemed to be a middle ground in terms of gut diversity. Furthermore, the California gut-microbe species often contained genes associated with responding to oxidative damage — which might be a knock-on effect of chronic inflammation.
