Teaching with Digital 3D Models of Minerals and Rocks

The disruption to geoscience curricula due to the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the difficulty of making mineral and rock samples accessible to students online rather than through traditional lab classes. In spring 2020, our community had to adapt rapidly to remote instruction; this transition amplified existing disparities in access to geoscience education but can be a catalyst to increase accessibility and flexibility in instruction permanently. Fortunately, a rich collection of 3D mineral and rock samples is being generated by a community of digital modelers (e.g., Perkins et al., 2019)

Relationship of ZNF423 and CTSO with breast cancer risk in two randomised tamoxifen prevention trials

A case–control study from two randomised breast cancer prevention trials of tamoxifen and raloxifene (P-1 and P-2) identified single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in or near genes ZNF423 and CTSO as factors which predict which women will derive most anti-cancer benefit from selective oestrogen receptor modulator (SERM) therapy. In this article, we further examine this question using blood samples from two randomised tamoxifen prevention trials: the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study I (IBIS-I) and the Royal Marsden trial (Marsden). A nested case–control study was designed with 2:1 matching in IBIS-I and 1:1 matching in Marsden. The OncoArray was used for genotyping and included two SNPs previously identified (rs8060157 in ZNF423 and rs10030044 near CTSO), and 102 further SNPs within the same regions. Overall, there were 369 cases and 662 controls, with 148 cases and 268 controls from the tamoxifen arms. Odds ratios were estimated by conditional logistic regression, with Wald 95 % confidence intervals. In the tamoxifen arms, the per-allele odds ratio for rs8060157 was 0.99 (95 %CI 0.73–1.34) and 1.00 (95 %CI 0.76–1.33) for rs10030044. In the placebo arm, the odds ratio was 1.10 (95 %CI 0.87–1.40) for rs8060157 and 1.01 (95 %CI 0.79–1.29) for rs10030044. There was no evidence to suggest that other SNPs in the surrounding regions of these SNPs might predict response to tamoxifen. Results from these two prevention trials do not support the earlier findings. rs8060157 in ZNF423 and rs10030044 near CTSO do not appear to predict response to tamoxifen

Relationship of ZNF423 and CTSO with breast cancer risk in two randomised tamoxifen prevention trials

This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institute of Health (Grant number prime award: 5U19CA148065-03Rev; sub-award: 114080_5029147 to JC) and Cancer Research UK (Grant number C569/A16891). MD received funding from the Royal Marsden NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. This work was also supported by the Da Costa Foundation for Breast Cancer Prevention

Song types, song performance, and the use of repertoires in dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis)

Song performance encompasses the idea of how physiologically demanding different songs are to sing, and this is thought to reflect the singing ability of individual birds. In the dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis), each male has a repertoire of song types, some of which are shared with other males in the population. We used 4 measures of performance, based on trade-offs between song traits, to test if song performance is consistent among the song types making up the repertoire of individual males. We also tested if song types differ consistently in performance regardless of which males sing them. We found low but significant correlations of performance measures among the song types of individual males. This contrasts with highly consistent differences in performance among song types, regardless of which males sing them. We conclude that performance of single song types, as evaluated by trade-off--based measures of performance, gives little information about male singing ability. As song types differ in performance, we asked if males use the song types in their repertoires differently. We found that juncos use higher performance song types during bouts of more motivated singing, as evaluated by the length of songs, suggesting that song types may be preferentially used in different contexts depending on their performance. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.