Glycosylation of plasma IgG in colorectal cancer prognosis

In this study we demonstrate the potential value of Immunoglobulin G (IgG) glycosylation as a novel prognostic biomarker of colorectal cancer (CRC). We analysed plasma IgG glycans in 1229 CRC patients and correlated with survival outcomes. We assessed the predictive value of clinical algorithms and compared this to algorithms that also included glycan predictors. Decreased galactosylation, decreased sialylation (of fucosylated IgG glycan structures) and increased bisecting GlcNAc in IgG glycan structures were strongly associated with all-cause (q < 0.01) and CRC mortality (q = 0.04 for galactosylation and sialylation). Clinical algorithms showed good prediction of all-cause and CRC mortality (Harrell’s C: 0.73, 0.77; AUC: 0.75, 0.79, IDI: 0.02, 0.04 respectively). The inclusion of IgG glycan data did not lead to any statistically significant improvements overall, but it improved the prediction over clinical models for stage 4 patients with the shortest follow-up time until death, with the median gain in the test AUC of 0.08. These glycan differences are consistent with significantly increased IgG pro-inflammatory activity being associated with poorer CRC prognosis, especially in late stage CRC. In the absence of validated biomarkers to improve upon prognostic information from existing clinicopathological factors, the potential of these novel IgG glycan biomarkers merits further investigation

Nothing Lasts Forever: Environmental Discourses on the Collapse of Past Societies

The study of the collapse of past societies raises many questions for the theory and practice of archaeology. Interest in collapse extends as well into the natural sciences and environmental and sustainability policy. Despite a range of approaches to collapse, the predominant paradigm is environmental collapse, which I argue obscures recognition of the dynamic role of social processes that lie at the heart of human communities. These environmental discourses, together with confusion over terminology and the concepts of collapse, have created widespread aporia about collapse and resulted in the creation of mixed messages about complex historical and social processes

Persistent Place-Making in Prehistory: the Creation, Maintenance, and Transformation of an Epipalaeolithic Landscape

Most archaeological projects today integrate, at least to some degree, how past people engaged with their surroundings, including both how they strategized resource use, organized technological production, or scheduled movements within a physical environment, as well as how they constructed cosmologies around or created symbolic connections to places in the landscape. However, there are a multitude of ways in which archaeologists approach the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human-landscape interrelationships. This paper explores some of these approaches for reconstructing the Epipalaeolithic (ca. 23,000–11,500&nbsp;years BP) landscape of Southwest Asia, using macro- and microscale geoarchaeological approaches to examine how everyday practices leave traces of human-landscape interactions in northern and eastern Jordan. The case studies presented here demonstrate that these Epipalaeolithic groups engaged in complex and far-reaching social landscapes. Examination of the Early and Middle Epipalaeolithic (EP) highlights that the notion of “Neolithization” is somewhat misleading as many of the features we use to define this transition were already well-established patterns of behavior by the Neolithic. Instead, these features and practices were enacted within a hunter-gatherer world and worldview

Multiple sea-ice states and abrupt MOC transitions in a general circulation ocean model

Sea ice has been suggested, based on simple models, to play an important role in past glacial–interglacial oscillations via the so-called “sea-ice switch” mechanism. An important requirement for this mechanism is that multiple sea-ice extents exist under the same land ice configuration. This hypothesis of multiple sea-ice extents is tested with a state-of-the-art ocean general circulation model coupled to an atmospheric energy–moisture-balance model. The model includes a dynamic-thermodynamic sea-ice module, has a realistic ocean configuration and bathymetry, and is forced by annual mean forcing. Several runs with two different land ice distributions represent present-day and cold-climate conditions. In each case the ocean model is initiated with both ice-free and fully ice-covered states. We find that the present-day runs converge approximately to the same sea-ice state for the northern hemisphere while for the southern hemisphere a difference in sea-ice extent of about three degrees in latitude between the different runs is observed. The cold climate runs lead to meridional sea-ice extents that are different by up to four degrees in latitude in both hemispheres. While approaching the final states, the model exhibits abrupt transitions from extended sea-ice states and weak meridional overturning circulation, to less extended sea ice and stronger meridional overturning circulation, and vice versa. These transitions are linked to temperature changes in the North Atlantic high-latitude deep water. Such abrupt changes may be associated with Dansgaard–Oeschger events, as proposed by previous studies. Although multiple sea ice states have been observed, the difference between these states is not large enough to provide a strong support for the sea-ice-switch mechanism