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Errors found in dozens of papers by top scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dozens of papers by the head of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and three senior DFCI researchers need to be retracted or corrected, the institute affiliated with Harvard Medical School has concluded after a freelance data sleuth alleged that they are “hopelessly corrupt with errors.” A 2 January post by biologist Sholto David on the For Better Science blog flagged 57 papers between 1997 and 2017 co-authored by DFCI President and CEO Laurie Glimcher, Chief Operating Officer William Hahn, Senior Vice President Irene Ghobrial, and DFCI center Director Kenneth Anderson. The papers largely cover the basic ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 22, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Is NASA too down on space-based solar power?
This month, NASA cast a shadow on one of the most visionary prospects for freeing the world from fossil fuels: collecting solar energy in space and beaming it to Earth. An agency report found the scheme is feasible by 2050 but would cost between 12 and 80 times as much as ground-based renewable energy sources. Undaunted, many government agencies and companies are pushing ahead with demonstration plans. Some researchers say NASA’s analysis is too pessimistic. “There are assumptions that are just wrong and others that are incredibly conservative,” says Martin Soltau, co-CEO of Space Solar, a development company f...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 22, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

New type of water splitter could make green hydrogen cheaper
To wean itself off fossil fuels, the world needs cheaper ways to produce green hydrogen—a clean-burning fuel made by using renewable electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Now researchers report a way to avoid the need for a costly membrane at the heart of the water-splitting devices, and to instead produce hydrogen and oxygen in completely separate chambers. As a lab-based proof of concept, the new setup —reported this month in Nature Materials— is a long way from working at an industrial scale. But if successful, it could help heavy industries such as steelmaking and fertiliz...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 19, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Yes, your pet might eat your corpse. That ’s a problem for investigators
Australian police probably expected a gruesome scene when they checked on a 69-year-old man suspected to have been dead for days. But when they opened the door to his home, they didn’t expect the approximately 30 cats that came flooding out. Inside, they found the man’s body on the floor, with his face gnawed down to the skull and his heart and lungs gone. As if to dispel any doubt about what happened, one cat was still sitting inside the man’s emptied chest cavity. “You’d think it was a bear or something,” says Roger Byard, a forensic pathologist at the University of Adelaide who wrote about the...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 19, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

First SARS-CoV-2 genome was deposited in U.S. database earlier than previously known
A U.S. House of Representatives panel yesterday released evidence that a Chinese research team submitted a SARS-CoV-2 genome to a U.S. database on 28 December 2019, nearly 2 weeks before a sequence from another group became public and kick-started the race to develop vaccines and drugs for COVID-19. The revelation, first reported by The Wall Street Journal , renewed allegations that Chinese officials tried to cover up early sequences of the new coronavirus. Lawmakers said the new information also raises the question of whether the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) GenBank database s...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 19, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

New risk genes for glaucoma identified in people of African ancestry
What starts with some blind spots can progress to complete blindness in the debilitating condition known as glaucoma. Early treatment is key, yet many people don’t know what—if any—genetic risk factors they carry for the disease, especially if they belong to minority populations. A study published today in Cell may offer some hope. The largest analysis ever conducted of genetic risk factors for glaucoma in people of African ancestry identifies several new genetic variants that likely contribute to condition. The new study “is meeting an unmet need and beyond,” says Terri Young, a p...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 18, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Nearby galaxy ’s giant black hole is real, ‘shadow’ image confirms
A familiar shadow looms in a fresh image of the heart of the nearby galaxy M87. It confirms that the galaxy harbors a gravitational sinkhole so powerful that light cannot escape, one generated by a black hole 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. But compared with a previous image from the network of radio dishes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), the new one reveals a subtle shift in the bright ring surrounding the shadow, which could provide clues to how gases churn around the black hole. “We can see that shift now,” says team member Sera Markoff of the University of Amsterdam. “We can start to use th...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 18, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Uprooted Ukrainian scientists may never return from their new research homes
Kyiv, Ukraine— When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Mariupol State University (MSU) on 17 November 2023, he didn’t have to slip behind enemy lines into the devastated city, occupied by Russia since May 2022. He simply had to drive a few minutes to a leafy neighborhood here in Ukraine’s capital, where MSU has found a new home in exile. Zelenskyy had come to pay tribute to the university’s resilience. Since MSU relocated in April 2022, it has re-enrolled 3200 students, about 70% of the prewar number. The new facilities also include a humanitarian hub to distribute food and other essentials ...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 17, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

New undersea robot digitally captures the sea ’s most delicate life
Deep in the ocean are millions of creatures representing thousands of species that have yet to be studied by scientists. But a new effort to film, capture, and pull DNA out of elusive jellyfish, tunicates, worms, and other soft-bodied creatures may change that, say researchers behind a study out today in Science Advances . As a proof of concept, they describe new details about four squishy creatures from the deep . “It is an exciting new way to sample the ocean,” says Adam Greer, a biological oceanographer at the University of Georgia’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography who was not involved...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 17, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Dogged by climate change and human hunters, a mammoth ’s life is written in her tusks
First, the 14,000-year-old woolly mammoth whose tusks were found in 2009 near Fairbanks, Alaska, needed a name. “They wanted a name from the Indigenous community,” recalls Evelynn Combs, an archaeologist and Mendas Cha’ag tribal member. The Healy Lake Village Council settled on Élmayųujey’eh , “an affectionate nickname for things that look funny” in the tribe’s Dené language, Combs explains. Then, Elma (for short) needed a life story, which a detailed analysis of the tusks has now provided. Her travels are giving Combs and colleagues a rare glimpse into the ways of her species at the e...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 17, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

A promising snakebite treatment seemed ready for prime time. Then, it backfired
A single bite from the terciopelo ( Bothrops asper ), a viper that lives in Central America and northern South America, is responsible for hundreds of fatalities each year. Many more are maimed by the venom’s muscle-destroying toxins, as existing treatments are largely ineffective at preventing tissue death. Now, researchers report that a once-promising new drug, an antibody that counteracts a pernicious toxin in the viper’s venom, has failed in animal trials. But the way that it failed—worsening the toxin’s damage in mice and eventually killing the animals instead of protecting them—may reveal new...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 16, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Wisconsin bill to restrict pathogen studies worries scientists
A hearing this week in Wisconsin on a proposal to bar research that may make human pathogens more dangerous has scientists worried that such state bans would hamper a broad range of microbiology studies. Bills like Wisconsin’s could also conflict with or exceed new federal restrictions on so-called gain-of-function (GOF) research, due out any moment. The Wisconsin bill is still early in the legislative process, and its prospects are uncertain. But the hearing gave a platform to a small, vocal group of scientists who want to forbid certain GOF studies. Several hold the controversial view that such research is to bla...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 12, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Some crustaceans have evolved a way to make silk
SEATTLE— For millennia, people have marveled at the intricacies of spiders’ strong, silken webs and treasured the luxurious softness of silk spun by silkworms. A few other insect species, such as bees and flies, make silks, too. But few people, even biologists, may know that a diverse array of crustaceans also make this versatile and valuable protein fiber. Now, two graduate students think its past time for these lesser known silk producers to get their due. The pair worked together to gather and analyze genetic material from dozens of crustaceans called amphipods, a few of which make silk. One of the studen...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 12, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Do prints from two different fingers belong to the same person? AI can tell
Using artificial intelligence (AI), a computer can tell whether fingerprints made by two different digits—say, a thumb and an index finger—belong to the same or different people, a team of roboticists claim. The advance reveals a surprising similarity between an individual’s fingers, but experts question the utility of the observation for forensic investigations. The practice of using fingerprints to identify people took off in the late 19th century and remained the gold standard in biometric identification until DNA analysis emerged. Called dermatoglyphics, it relies on the assumption that the tiny ridges on a...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 12, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research

Bacteria stitch exotic building blocks into novel proteins
Biology students are taught that DNA codes for just 20 amino acids, the building blocks of all of life’s proteins. Researchers would love to build proteins from the hundreds of exotic amino acids that life doesn’t use. But the preference of the cell’s protein-building machinery for standard amino acids has stymied their quest to use the full palette. Now, researchers report they’ve developed an efficient way to coax bacteria to add structurally unusual amino acids into proteins. So far they’ve succeeded with just four exotic building blocks, but their approach could lead to medicines that persist longer in the bo...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - January 11, 2024 Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research