Exponentially Increasing Incidences of Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma in Europe Correlate with Low Personal Annual UV Doses and Suggests 2 Major Risk Factors

For several decades the incidence of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) steadily increased in fair-skinned, indoor-working people around the world. Scientists think poor tanning ability resulting in sunburns initiate CMM, but they do not understand why the incidence continues to increase despite the increased use of sunscreens and formulations offering more protection. This paradox, along with lower incidences of CMM in outdoor workers, although they have significantly higher annual UV doses than indoor workers have, perplexes scientists. We found a temporal exponential increase in the CMM incidence indicating second-order reaction kinetics revealing the existence of 2 major risk factors. From epidemiology studies, we know one major risk factor for getting CMM is poor tanning ability and we now propose the other major risk factor may be the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) because clinicians find β HPVs in over half the biopsies. Moreover, we uncovered yet another paradox; the increasing CMM incidences significantly correlate with decreasing personal annual UV dose, a proxy for low vitamin D3 levels. We also discovered the incidence of CMM significantly increased with decreasing personal annual UV dose from 1960, when it was almost insignificant, to 2000. UV and other DNA-damaging agents can activate viruses, and UV-induced cytokines can hide HPV from immune surveillance, which may explain why CMM also occurs in anatomical locations where the sun does not shine. Thus, we propose the 2 major risk factors for getting CMM are intermittent UV exposures that result in low cutaneous levels of vitamin D3 and possibly viral infection

A systematic review of dietary, nutritional, and physical activity interventions for the prevention of prostate cancer progression and mortality

PURPOSE: Given the long-term, although potentially fatal, nature of prostate cancer, there is increasing observational evidence for the reduction in disease progression and mortality through changes in lifestyle factors. METHODS: We systematically reviewed dietary, nutritional, and physical activity randomized interventions aimed at modifying prostate cancer progression and disease-specific mortality, including a detailed assessment of risk of bias and methodological quality. RESULTS: Forty-four randomized controlled trials of lifestyle interventions, with prostate cancer progression or mortality outcomes, were identified. Substantial heterogeneity of the data prevented a meta-analysis. The included trials involved 3,418 prostate cancer patients, median 64 men per trial, from 13 countries. A trial of a nutritional supplement of pomegranate seed, green tea, broccoli, and turmeric; a trial comparing flaxseed, low-fat diet, flaxseed, and low-fat diet versus usual diet; and a trial supplementing soy, lycopene, selenium, and coenzyme Q10, all demonstrated beneficial effects. These trials were also assessed as having low risk of bias and high methodological quality (as were seven other trials with no evidence of benefit). The remaining trials were either underpowered, at high or unclear risk of bias, inadequately reported, of short duration or measured surrogate outcomes of unproven relationship to mortality or disease progression, which precluded any benefits reported being reliable. CONCLUSION: Large, well-designed randomized trials with clinical endpoints are recommended for lifestyle modification interventions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10552-015-0659-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the evolution of form and function in the amniote jaw.

The amniote jaw complex is a remarkable amalgamation of derivatives from distinct embryonic cell lineages. During development, the cells in these lineages experience concerted movements, migrations, and signaling interactions that take them from their initial origins to their final destinations and imbue their derivatives with aspects of form including their axial orientation, anatomical identity, size, and shape. Perturbations along the way can produce defects and disease, but also generate the variation necessary for jaw evolution and adaptation. We focus on molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate form in the amniote jaw complex, and that enable structural and functional integration. Special emphasis is placed on the role of cranial neural crest mesenchyme (NCM) during the species-specific patterning of bone, cartilage, tendon, muscle, and other jaw tissues. We also address the effects of biomechanical forces during jaw development and discuss ways in which certain molecular and cellular responses add adaptive and evolutionary plasticity to jaw morphology. Overall, we highlight how variation in molecular and cellular programs can promote the phenomenal diversity and functional morphology achieved during amniote jaw evolution or lead to the range of jaw defects and disease that affect the human condition

A Novel Application of System Survival Signature in Reliability Assessment of Offshore Structures

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Offshore platforms are large structures consisting of a large number of components of various types. Thus a variety of methods are usually necessary to assess the structural reliability of these structures, ranging from Finite-Elements-methods to Monte-Carlo-Simulations. However, often reliability information is only available for the members and not for the overall, complex, system. The recently introduced survival signature provides a way to separate the structural analysis from the behaviour of the individual members. Thus it is then possible to use structural reliability methods to obtain information about how the failure of several constituent members of the offshore platform leads to overall system failure. This way it is possible to separate the structural from time-dependent information, allowing flexible and computationally efficient computation of reliability predictions

The importance of interacting climate modes on Australia’s contribution to global carbon cycle extremes

The global carbon cycle is highly sensitive to climate-driven fluctuations of precipitation, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. This was clearly manifested by a 20% increase of the global terrestrial C sink in 2011 during the strongest sustained La Niña since 1917. However, inconsistencies exist between El Niño/La Niña (ENSO) cycles and precipitation in the historical record; for example, significant ENSO-precipitation correlations were present in only 31% of the last 100 years, and often absent in wet years. To resolve these inconsistencies, we used an advanced temporal scaling method for identifying interactions amongst three key climate modes (El Niño, the Indian Ocean dipole, and the southern annular mode). When these climate modes synchronised (1999-2012), drought and extreme precipitation were observed across Australia. The interaction amongst these climate modes, more than the effect of any single mode, was associated with large fluctuations in precipitation and productivity. The long-term exposure of vegetation to this arid environment has favoured a resilient flora capable of large fluctuations in photosynthetic productivity and explains why Australia was a major contributor not only to the 2011 global C sink anomaly but also to global reductions in photosynthetic C uptake during the previous decade of drought

The Evolution of Compact Binary Star Systems

We review the formation and evolution of compact binary stars consisting of white dwarfs (WDs), neutron stars (NSs), and black holes (BHs). Binary NSs and BHs are thought to be the primary astrophysical sources of gravitational waves (GWs) within the frequency band of ground-based detectors, while compact binaries of WDs are important sources of GWs at lower frequencies to be covered by space interferometers (LISA). Major uncertainties in the current understanding of properties of NSs and BHs most relevant to the GW studies are discussed, including the treatment of the natal kicks which compact stellar remnants acquire during the core collapse of massive stars and the common envelope phase of binary evolution. We discuss the coalescence rates of binary NSs and BHs and prospects for their detections, the formation and evolution of binary WDs and their observational manifestations. Special attention is given to AM CVn-stars -- compact binaries in which the Roche lobe is filled by another WD or a low-mass partially degenerate helium-star, as these stars are thought to be the best LISA verification binary GW sources.Comment: 105 pages, 18 figure

Adjustment for time-invariant and time-varying confounders in ‘unexplained residuals’ models for longitudinal data within a causal framework and associated challenges

‘Unexplained residuals’ models have been used within lifecourse epidemiology to model an exposure measured longitudinally at several time points in relation to a distal outcome. It has been claimed that these models have several advantages, including: the ability to estimate multiple total causal effects in a single model, and additional insight into the effect on the outcome of greater-than-expected increases in the exposure compared to traditional regression methods. We evaluate these properties and prove mathematically how adjustment for confounding variables must be made within this modelling framework. Importantly, we explicitly place unexplained residual models in a causal framework using directed acyclic graphs. This allows for theoretical justification of appropriate confounder adjustment and provides a framework for extending our results to more complex scenarios than those examined in this paper. We also discuss several interpretational issues relating to unexplained residual models within a causal framework. We argue that unexplained residual models offer no additional insights compared to traditional regression methods, and, in fact, are more challenging to implement; moreover, they artificially reduce estimated standard errors. Consequently, we conclude that unexplained residual models, if used, must be implemented with great care

Complexity Theory for a New Managerial Paradigm: A Research Framework

In this work, we supply a theoretical framework of how organizations can embed complexity management and sustainable development into their policies and actions. The proposed framework may lead to a new management paradigm, attempting to link the main concepts of complexity theory, change management, knowledge management, sustainable development, and cybernetics. We highlight how the processes of organizational change have occurred as a result of the move to adapt to the changes in the various global and international business environments and how this transformation has led to the shift toward the present innovation economy. We also point how organizational change needs to deal with sustainability, so that the change may be consistent with present needs, without compromising the future

The “Flexi-Chamber”: A Novel Cost-Effective In Situ Respirometry Chamber for Coral Physiological Measurements

Coral reefs are threatened worldwide, with environmental stressors increasingly affecting the ability of reef-building corals to sustain growth from calcification (G), photosynthesis (P) and respiration (R). These processes support the foundation of coral reefs by directly influencing biogeochemical nutrient cycles and complex ecological interactions and therefore represent key knowledge required for effective reef management. However, metabolic rates are not trivial to quantify and typically rely on the use of cumbersome in situ respirometry chambers and/or the need to remove material and examine ex situ, thereby fundamentally limiting the scale, resolution and possibly the accuracy of the rate data. Here we describe a novel low-cost in situ respirometry bag that mitigates many constraints of traditional glass and plexi-glass incubation chambers. We subsequently demonstrate the effectiveness of our novel "Flexi-Chamber" approach via two case studies: 1) the Flexi-Chamber provides values of P, R and G for the reef-building coral Siderastrea cf. stellata collected from reefs close to Salvador, Brazil, which were statistically similar to values collected from a traditional glass respirometry vessel; and 2) wide-scale application of obtaining P, R and G rates for different species across different habitats to obtain inter- and intra-species differences. Our novel cost-effective design allows us to increase sampling scale of metabolic rate measurements in situ without the need for destructive sampling and thus significantly expands on existing research potential, not only for corals as we have demonstrated here, but also other important benthic groups

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta