Blood Biopsies Coming to the Market

Simple blood tests may be the future of cancer diagnosis.

Around four years ago, now 77-year-old John Gormly went for what was supposed to be a routine blood test. But the results were life-changing.

The test suggested Gormly had colon cancer, which a colonoscopy later confirmed was Stage 2, meaning the cancer had spread through the wall of the colon but not to his lymph nodes.

"I thought [my doctor] was wrong," Gormly, CEO of a construction company near Newport Beach, California, told Live Science. "I go, 'Nah, I don't feel anything.' But there it was. It was real; the colonoscopy showed it."

Gormly was one of the first patients to take a newly approved test called Shield, which its makers say can detect colon cancer from a blood sample. After his diagnosis, Gormly had surgery to remove the tumor and was back at work within 10 days.

"Liquid biopsies" like the one that detected early cancer for Gormly are now coming to market. Could they lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment?

An early version of Guardant Health's Shield test has been commercially available since 2022, but it wasn't covered by insurance. However, after approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July 2024, a diagnostic version of Shield was launched commercially and is now covered by Medicare.

The "Shield" blood test, approved by the FDA, is a non-invasive screening method for colorectal cancer, detecting alterations in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the blood of individuals aged 45 and older at average risk.

Shield is only one of a number of emerging "liquid biopsies."

Scientists have developed blood tests for several cancers, including those of the breast, pancreas and stomach. Some blood tests even detect multiple types of cancer. If these liquid biopsies can be rolled out widely, they could help detect cancer earlier, more easily, or with fewer invasive measures — which, in turn, could lead to earlier detection and fewer cancer deaths.

It is likely that blood-based cancer screening will become a normal part of our medical care — one that has the potential to improve cancer outcomes dramatically, experts say.

Read more here: Simple blood tests could be the future of cancer diagnosis | Live Science; Order Shield for your Medical Practice

Riken Plastics Surpass Conventional Plastics

 

Researchers at Japan's RIKEN Center have created a durable plastic which is fully recyclable, and it dissolves in sea water; presenting a revolutionary alternative to traditional plastics which are polluting oceans with harmful microplastics.

The new plastic from RIKEN and University of Tokyo dissolves in seawater in hours and breaks down in soil in 10 days, boosting soil health with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen. 

The RIKEN team was able to generate plastics with varying degrees of hardnesses and tensile strength, finding all were comparable or in some cases better than conventional plastics. This means that the new type of plastic can be customized to meet demand; hard scratch resistant plastics, rubber silicone-like plastics, strong weight-bearing plastics, or low tensile flexible plastics are all possible.

This plastic is as strong as conventional plastic but leaves no harmful microplastics. The product is a big step toward ending plastic pollution and supporting sustainable farming.

RIKEN is Japan's largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines. Founded in 1917, initially as a private research foundation, RIKEN has grown rapidly in size and scope, today encompassing a network of world-class research centers and institutes across Japan.

Read more here: Japanese researchers create ‘revolutionary’ plastic which dissolves in salt water

Chaos Seekers Studied

 

Newgate Prison in London burned by rioters in 1780.

Recent studies suggest that perceived status loss can cause some people to seek chaos as a solution. 

About 15 percent of the U.S. population desires chaos. Chaos seekers tend to harbor dark personality traits and feel as if they are losing social status.

“Chaos is a strategy that some people use to account for a perceived loss in status,” says political scientist Kevin Arceneaux of the research university Sciences Po in Paris, France. “Their reaction to that is to then start to create trouble, as a way to turn the cart on its head and try to reclaim their place.”

Some 5,000 Americans rated their level of agreement with statements such as, “I think society should be burned to the ground,” “I get a kick when natural disasters strike foreign countries” and “Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.”

Read the full article here: Why some chaos-seekers just want to watch the world burn

Did the January 6 Capitol breach reflect this attitude in the rioters? The breach including damage to the Capitol building and grounds is estimated to be $2,881,360.20. That amount reflects, among other things, damage to the Capitol building and grounds and certain costs borne by the U.S. Capitol Police.

Family Tomb of Etruscan Metalworkers

 

Archaeologists have discovered a 2,500-year-old Etruscan tomb at an ancient necropolis in Italy. The tomb is decorated with bright-red wall paintings, one of which shows a woman beside two young men. Another scene illustrates a metallurgical workshop. The workshop painting suggests the deceased's family were metalworkers.

"The inclusion of a unique scene of smithy in the painted decoration of one wall allows us to have a glimpse of the economic sources of the wealth of this family, which was evidently involved in metal management business," Daniele Federico Maras, director of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence and leader of the team that excavated the tomb.

Analysis of the tomb is ongoing, and the team plans to use multispectral imaging technologies to examine the paintings and determine which colors have been lost.

Read more here: 2,500-year-old painted tomb with 'unique scene of smithy' discovered at Etruscan necropolis in Italy | Live Science

What Paleoanthropologists Want to Discover

This image depicts the "linear evolution theory" and is called the "March of Progress" image. However, the evidence of many groups of archaic humans living at the same time requires a new hypothesis. The linear evolution theory was dismissed 50 years ago. If similar images appear in science texts, it reveals how most textbooks are 40-50 years behind the front edge of the sciences.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Paleoanthropologists recognize that there were many groups of archaic humans. Among them were the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. A recent genome study revealed that the Denisovans "diverged from Neanderthals 400,000 years ago and that at least two distinct Denisovan populations mixed with ancestors of present-day Asians."

There are limited physical remains of Denisovans. These include a finger bone, three teeth, and a skull fragment from the Denisova Cave; and a jawbone and the Xiahe mandible from Baishiya Karst Cave at the northeastern Tibetan Plateau.

In a November 8, 2024 interview, Dr. L. Ongaro said, “It’s a common misconception that humans evolved suddenly and neatly from one common ancestor, but the more we learn the more we realize interbreeding with different hominins occurred and helped to shape the people we are today."

Richard Leakey long ago abandoned the linear evolution misconception, saying:

Current findings on human evolution have brought us to the position where much of what we believed to have theoretically happened proves to be incorrect. Much that is in the textbooks, much that is still being taught in universities about human evolution is no longer true, but it continues to be taught because the implications of recent discoveries are insufficiently understood.

It was principally Weidenreich, Le Gros Clark, and a few of the people of that generation, just previous to mine, who put forward and strongly defended the idea that man had gone through a very simple series of stages of evolution: the pongid stage, an Australopithecine stage, a Pithecanthropus stage, and then man as we know him today. Theoretically, this had always seemed highly unlikely to some of us, since it meant that man had done something which no other mammal had done: evolved in a single straight line instead of having one main branch, with many experimental side branches which failed to make the grade. Yet the old theory persists. Linked with it is the concept, still very, very widely taught and very widely believed, that man in the relatively near past was at a pongid or ape stage of evolution. In such a very short time, three or four million years, as the books and many of my colleagues put it, we are supposed to have lost our huge canine teeth, lost our simian shelves, lost our long, brachiating arms, ceased to dwell in the trees, and many other similar but, I fear, erroneous concepts. These were theories which in the light of current facts no longer stand up."

Anthropologists such as John Hawks note that there is a wider range of anatomical features among Neanderthals than is generally recognized. Hawks also believes that there are limits to what can be determined by genetic tests of archaic fossils. He relies on morphological studies. 

The story of human origins cannot be understood from DNA alone. That can take us back only to about 500,000 years ago. What about the humans who lived before that? We have artifactual evidence of humans that date to over 500,000 years ago. Some human fossils found in Eastern Africa date to well before 500,000 years ago.

When Jeremy DeSilva, a British anthropologist, compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus fossils of human ancestors ("hominins") between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the ankle joints resembled those of modern humans rather than those of apes. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle bones are quite distinct from those of apes.

The discovery of a complete fourth metatarsal of A. afarensis at Hadar that shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans." (Carol Ward, William H. Kimbel, Donald C. Johanson, Feb. 2011) 

The Ward, Kimbel and Johanson study reveals how scientists can change their minds. Donald Johanson was the person who announced to the world that Lucy was "ape of the South" or Australopithecus. Has he since reconsidered that assessment?

Excavations at the Boker Tachtit archaeological site in the Negev Desert revealed that modern humans and Neanderthals lived together.

Today various groups of Australopithecus are recognized. Some are gracile and others are robust. There are Australopithecus afarensis (including Lucy), Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus sediba, Kenyanthropus platyops, and "robust" specimens like Paranthropus robustus and Paranthropus aethiopicus.

In 2011 researchers discovered jaw bones and teeth of four individuals in the Afar region of Ethiopia that date to between 3.3m and 3.5m years. These archaic humans were alive at the same time as other groups of early humans, suggesting that it is time to abandon the linear evolution hypothesis. Clearly, there were more archaic humans living 3 million years ago than is generally recognized. How they may be related is the great question facing paleoanthropologists.

Related reading: A look at the Neanderthal from Altamura, John Hawks; Can Molecular Models be aligned with Human Morphology?; Many Groups of Archaic Humans (video); Ancient human ancestor Lucy lived alongside at least 4 other proto-human species | Live Science; “Lucy”, superstar of evolution, at fifty; When hominins walked in each others' tracks

Tidal Changes in the Bay of Fundy

 

Low tide at Alma in New Brunswick.

The Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, Canada has the highest tides of any place on Earth. There are two high tides and two low tides every 24-hour period in the Bay. Twice every day the Bay fills and empties of a billion tons of water during each tide cycle. That is more than the flow of all the world’s freshwater rivers combined. 

The Earth's average tide-driven variation in sea level is three feet, but the water level near Wolfville, in Nova Scotia's Minas Basin, can be as much as 53 feet (16 meters) higher than at low tide.

At Fundy National Park, the difference between high and low tide can be as much as 12 meters or 39 feet. At the head of the bay, the tide can rise 16 meters or 53 feet, the height of a four-story building.

When the tides recede, they leave behind beaches of cobbles, shale, pebbles, sand, or mud flats, and strand small boats such as shown above at the village of Alma.

Ocean tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun on Earth. Tides are a type of wave motion that affect water levels. Along the coasts, the tides typically reach high tide and ebb tide twice a day, about six hours apart (called a semi-diurnal tide). Tidal actions are more evident when the bodies of water are large or connect to oceans.

Even lakes have tides, though the effects are less obvious. One can note changes in the waves by the sloshing back and forth. On smaller bodies of water, the more significant geostrophic forces are the winds and barometric pressure.

When a bay is open to the ocean, such the Bay of Fundy, the rise and fall of the tide feeds energy into the enclosure periodically and cyclically. Tidal effects depend a great deal on the configuration and location of the shoreline. It is possible for tides to cause water systems to flow in the opposite direction than they normally flow. For example, at low tide the St. John River surges over the rapids at Reversing Falls. At high tide, the tide of the Bay of Fundy forces the Falls to flow backwards. 

Related reading: What are tides? (noaa.gov); Tides | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (noaa.gov); Bay of Fundy: The Highest Tides in the World | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (noaa.gov)

Hydras May be Clue to Cancerous tumors

 

Freshwater hydra feeding.

Photo credit: Motic America, May 17, 2022

Transmissible cancers are rare. Scientists have spotted only about a dozen examples, mostly in mussels and their relatives.

Transmissible cancers cells can spread from one individual to another, like an infectious disease. Two transmissible tumors nearly wiped out the Tasmanian devil. Another causes unsightly tumors in dogs’ genitals.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, scientists report the spontaneous generation of transmissible tumors in the lab. The discovery was made in small, anemone like freshwater animals named hydras that are known to be cancer prone. Researchers hope the finding will help them better understand how these tumors develop, evolve, and spread, which could ultimately help prevent or control transmissible cancers in wildlife.

Hydras might seem to be an unexpected choice for researching cancer, but the freshwater cnidarian Hydra oligactis readily develop tumors when overfed in captivity, which makes them an excellent choice for studying how cancers arise. They reproduce asexually by generating clones of themselves through “budding." The buds form from the body wall, grow into miniature adults and break away when mature. These creatures can help researchers gain insight into the genetics of cancer.

Read more here: ‘Immortal’ creatures may reveal clues to contagious cancers | Science | AAAS