Excess Enzyme P300 Creates an Environment Where Cancer In The Liver Can Spread. Lower this Enzyme and Liver Cancer Can be Suppressed.

Institute scientist makes liver cancer breakthrough; Discovery suppresses liver tumor growth | Austin Daily Herald

Dr. Ningling Kang and team from The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota have published new research in the journal, "Gastroenterology," impacting liver cancer development. The research focuses on the role that specialized cells and enzymes play in tumor growth in the liver. The article was written in collaboration with other researchers, including Drs.

 From article, (we found a critical molecule that creates an environment for cancer spreading in the liver,” said Kang, head of the tumor microenvironment and metastasis laboratory of The Hormel Institute. “Understanding how cancer and the liver interact allows us to test therapies to stop the spread and growth of cancer in the liver.”

The article focuses on the role of an enzyme, p300, which regulates gene transcription. Cancer cells recruit these specialized cells to help create an environment that promotes tumor growth.

When cancer cells recruit the specialized cells, called hepatic stellate cells, to build stiff tissue and tumor masses in the liver, the stiffness causes p300 to accumulate and tumor growth is promoted. When the p300 gene of the specialized cells was disrupted, tumor growth was suppressed.

The liver is a common site for growth of cancer cells, including breast or colorectal cancer cells. When cancer cells grow in secondary areas, such as colorectal cancer growing in the liver, it is called metastasis. Current treatment options for liver cancer, both primary and metastasis, are very limited and contribute to mortality of these cancer patients.

Kang’s research discovery is important because it identifies a new therapeutic target for suppressing cancer growth in the liver.

Kang and team will next begin testing possible drug combination therapies to disrupt or inhibit p300 in the quest to suppress colorectal cancer growth in the liver.)

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How to reduce CO2 In the Atmosphere and Reduce Global Warming? Add Pulverized Volcanic Rock to Farm Fields.

How Crushed Volcanic Rock in Farm Soil Could Help Slow Global Warming - and Boost Crops

Pulverizing volcanic rock and spreading the dust like fertilizer on farm soils could suck billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere and boost crop yields on a warming planet with a growing population.

 From article, (Pulverizing volcanic rock and spreading the dust like fertilizer on farm soils could suck billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere and boost crop yields on a warming planet with a growing population.

In a paper published this week in the scientific journal Nature Plants, an international team of researchers lays out the prospects for "enhanced rock weathering"—a process that uses pulverized silicate rocks, like basalt, to speed the ability of minerals to store carbon in soil.

The team, led by the University of Sheffield in the UK and including U.S. climate scientist James Hansen, says the technique of enhanced weathering on swaths of the world's cropland could potentially offset a meaningful chunk of global carbon emissions.

Though their estimates are preliminary, the authors say if farmers added enough pulverized rock per acre on a majority of the world's cropland, they could remove up to 4 billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, per year, by 2100. That's about a tenth of today's global greenhouse gas emissions. (Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use are currently about 8 billion metric tons.)

This could happen fairly quickly. "Conceivably, roll-out could take place within a decade or two," said David Beerling, director of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation at the University of Sheffield and the lead author of the study.

In nature, this takes millions of years. Rain, which is slightly acidic, chemically breaks down rock in a process that converts carbon dioxide to bicarbonate, which eventually washes into the ocean where it's stored for hundreds of thousands of years. This natural process absorbs about 3 percent of global emissions from fossil fuels.

But pulverizing the rocks turbocharges the process, allowing the minerals to be released faster and to store carbon within several years, Beerling explained.

When farmers apply the powdered rock onto croplands, they'll see added benefits, the paper says: increased plant nutrients leading to higher yields and a potential drop in fertilizer and pesticide use.

The authors note that the best candidate for enhanced weathering is the land already being farmed—about 11 percent of the globe's land area—where farmers already apply limestone to improve soil and counteract  acidification. That means the infrastructure for applying pulverized rocks is effectively in place.

Another question mark is the cost. Current estimates range from $52 to $480 per metric ton of stored CO2, although boosted crop yields and lower fertilizer use could offset some of the price tag. Another "negative emissions" strategy, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, costs between $39 and $100 per metric ton.

But, the authors note, enhanced rock weathering could be one of the tools in the climate-control toolkit.

"Strategies for taking CO2 out of the atmosphere are now on the research agenda, and we need realistic assessment of these strategies, what they might be able to deliver and what the challenges are," Hansen said in a press release.)

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Stop and Go Traffic? Gone with Self-Driving Cars.

Study shows autonomous vehicles can help improve traffic flow

Improvements in traffic flow and fuel consumption are boosted when even a few autonomous vehicles are immersed in bulk traffic, according to research by a Rutgers University-Camden scholar, Benedetto Piccoli, and a team of ...

 From article, (Improvements in traffic flow and fuel consumption are boosted when even a few autonomous vehicles are immersed in bulk traffic, according to research by a Rutgers University-Camden scholar, Benedetto Piccoli, and a team of researchers who recently presented their findings to policymakers in Washington, D.C.

At an exhibit at the Washington Auto Show on Jan. 24 and 25, the multidisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in traffic flow theory, control theory, robotics, cyber-physical systems, and transportation engineering demonstrated to policymakers how autonomous vehicles in their National Science Foundation-funded study helped to prevent traffic jams and can dissipate them when they appear.

The NSF invited the researchers to discuss their work with auto industry leaders and government officials, including U.S. Senator John Thune, chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Human drivers naturally create stop-and-go traffic, such as when someone makes a lane change or merges, or because of natural oscillations in human driving. The researchers found that by controlling the pace of the autonomous car in their field experiments, the autonomous car controlled the traffic flow by dissipating the stop-and-go waves so that traffic wasn't oscillating as it does when all of the cars are driven by humans. The researchers determined that even a small percentage of autonomous vehicles (5 percent) could have a significant impact in eliminating waves and reducing the total fuel consumption by up to 40 percent and the braking events by up to 99 percent.)

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Renewable Energy is closing in on Nuclear as the Third Largest Energy Source in the U.S.

Renewables Are Supplying a Record Amount of America's Energy

Renewable energy has taken a few hits over the past year, with the Trump Administration's recent implementation of a tariff on solar panels, decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, and funding cuts for several clean energy programs. But this barrage of bad news doesn't seem to have slowed down the industry.

 From article, (A recent report finds that renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro are still growing, and now account for 18 percent of U.S. energy generation.

This result comes from an analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which just published its 2018 edition of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. The analysis details the amount of energy produced by different sources in the country and is a good look at how renewable energy industries are faring, particularly after a year under an openly hostile presidential administration.

According to the analysis, renewable energy now accounts for approximately 18 percent of U.S. energy sources, up from 15 percent last year. Most of this growth comes from hydro sources, which have been rebounding now that droughts in the Southwest have diminished. In total, renewable sources generated 717 terawatt-hours of energy in 2017, an increase of 89 terawatt-hours over last year.

To put these numbers in perspective, nuclear power currently generates 20 percent of all U.S. energy, which means renewable sources, when taken all together, are on the verge of eclipsing nuclear. If these current growth rates hold steady, that should happen this year or the next, at which point renewable energy would become the third-largest source of energy in the United States.

Another positive piece of news for renewable energy is that the price of lithium-ion batteries is falling. Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are approximately 23 percent cheaper than they were a year ago, according to the Bloomberg report, and this lower cost means energy storage facilities are much cheaper to build. This, in turn, makes solar and wind projects more attractive because utilities can be less concerned about whether those projects will be generating energy at any given moment.)

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What do you do when you are a very rich person? You can buy many houses. You can invest in far out ventures, like Space Travel. And, you can invest in a watch that will keep track of 10,000 years of time.

Construction begins on Jeff Bezos' $42 million 10,000-year clock

Installation has finally begun on Jeff Bezos' 10,000-year clock, a project that the Amazon CEO has invested $42 million in. The actual idea for the clock comes from Danny Hillis, who originally proposed a 10,000-year clock in 1995 as a way to think about humanity and the planet

 From article, (Installation has finally begun on Jeff Bezos’ 10,000-year clock, a project that the Amazon CEO has invested $42 million in (along with a hollowed-out mountain in Texas that Bezos intends for a Blue Origin spaceport), with the goal of building a mechanical clock that will run for 10 millennia.

The actual idea for the clock comes from Danny Hillis, who originally proposed a 10,000-year clock in 1995 in Wired as a way to think about the long-term future of humanity and the planet. That idea grew into the Clock of the Long Now, a project by the Long Now Foundation, which Hillis went on to co-found to build an actual, working version of the proposed clock.

The group built a couple of prototypes, but Bezos’ clock — which Hillis is designing — will be the first to function on a full scale. The team has spent the last few years machining parts for the clock and drilling through the mountain to store the components. Bezos announced today in a tweet that installation of the machinery has begun on the 500-foot-tall mechanism.

According to the website for Bezos’ 10,000-year clock, visitors will (in theory) be able to view the finished timepiece, although the site notes that it’ll be a rough trip. “The nearest airport is several hours away by car” and a rugged foot trail that rises almost 2,000 feet above the valley floor.)

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