Playing the odds in clinical decision making: lessons from berry aneurysms undetected by magnetic resonance angiography

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Cancer cell lines show high heritability for motility but not generation time

Tumour evolution depends on heritable differences between cells in traits affecting cell survival or replication. It is well established that cancer cells are genetically and phenotypically heterogeneous; however, the extent to which this phenotypic variation is heritable is far less well explored. Here, we estimate the broad-sense heritability (H2) of two cell traits related to cancer hallmarks––cell motility and generation time––within populations of four cancer cell lines in vitro and find that motility is strongly heritable. This heritability is stable across multiple cell generations, with heritability values at the high end of those measured for a range of traits in natural populations of animals or plants. These findings confirm a central assumption of cancer evolution, provide a first quantification of the evolvability of key traits in cancer cells and indicate that there is ample raw material for experimental evolution in cancer cell lines. Generation time, a trait directly affecting cell fitness, shows substantially lower values of heritability than cell speed, consistent with its having been under directional selection removing heritable variation

The Biological Data Sustainability Paradox

Biological data in digital form has become a, if not the, driving force behind innovations in biology, medicine, and the environment. No study and no model would be complete without access to digital data (including text) collected by others and available in public repositories. With this ascent in the fundamental importance of data for reproducible scientific progress has come a troubling paradox.Comment: 12 pages 5852 words 1 figur

Investigating the effects of signal light position on human workload and reaction time in human-robot collaboration tasks

Critical to a seamless working relationship in human-robot collaborative environments is effective and frequent communication. This study looked to assess whether placing a light source on a robot was more effective for informing the human operator of the status of the robot than conventional human-machine interfaces for industrial system signaling such as light towers. Participants completed an assembly task while monitoring a robot and changes to the light sources: either from one of two light towers or LED strip lights attached to the robot. Workload was assessed by measuring reaction times to light changes and by counting number of completed assemblies. Although both the ANOVA and Friedman tests returned none significant results, total misses per condition showed that the participants did not miss any of the robot lights, whereas signals were missed for the light towers

European Bat Lyssavirus Type 2 RNA in Myotis daubentonii

Organ distribution of European bat lyssavirus type 2 viral RNA in its reservoir host, Myotis daubentonii (Daubenton's bat), was measured with a novel quantitative reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction assay. High levels of genomic RNA were found in the brain and were also detectable in the tongue, bladder, and stomach