It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, May 01, 2021
DEFUND THE POLICE 2 DC police cars were totaled after officers drag raced each other and crashed. All 4 cops were hospitalized.
Washington, DC, police cars drag raced and crashed into each other Thursday, Fox 5 DC reports.
Two squad cars were totaled, according to an internal email obtained by the network.
DC police said the four officers involved were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
Four police officers in Washington, DC, were taken to the hospital after drag racing their squad cars last Thursday, Fox 5 DC's Lindsay Watts reported. The two squad cars were also totaled.
Fox 5 obtained an internal email to command staff written by Durriyyah Habeebullah, 6th district commander of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.
According to Habeebullah, the drag race happened around 5 p.m. near Kenilworth Park, in the city's northeast quadrant.
"Two 6D scout cars were totaled because officers decided instead of fighting crime, patrolling their beats, or engaging the community – they decided to drag race each other on Anacostia Avenue at 5 pm in the evening," Habeebullah wrote, according to Fox 5 DC.
"What does this say to all of the members of MPD who are passionate about their job and work hard every day to make a difference. This is not fair to any of us," Habeebullah added.
Jaylah Jennings, a resident who witnessed the crash, told the network she saw two police cars going "really, really fast" before colliding and crashing through a wooden fence on the side of the road.
The department confirmed the crash in a statement to Insider, saying "preliminarily, it appears that members may have been racing the vehicles, resulting in an accident."
The department said that four officers were taken to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. All have been placed on "non-contact" pending an investigation into the matter, meaning they've been placed on desk duty, with pay.
The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Friday, April 30, 2021
Germany set to return Benin Bronzes 125 years after looting by British soldiers
Germany is set to return 440 of Benin Bronzes that were looted 125 years ago by a British colonial expedition and subsequently sold to collections around the world, including German museums, Berlin authorities said on Friday.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas welcomed a deal reached with museums to work on a plan for the restitution of the artifacts together with Nigeria, calling it a “turning point in dealing with our colonial history.”
Culture Minister Monika Gruetters, said the Benin Bronzes were a key test for the way the country deals with its colonial past.
“We are confronting our historic and moral responsibility,” she said.
Gruetters said the goal is to contribute to “understanding and reconciliation” with the descendants of those whose cultural treasures were stolen in colonial times. The first returns are planned for next year, she said.
A British colonial expedition plundered vast numbers of treasures from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin in 1897, including numerous bas-reliefs and sculptures. Many of the artifacts ended up in the British Museum, though hundreds were also sold to other collections.
The Ethnological Museum in Berlin has one of the world’s largest collection of historical objects from the Kingdom of Benin, estimated to include about 530 items, including 440 bronzes. Read Also: Mexico returns stolen Ile-Ife artefact
The University of Aberdeen and Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, are among the British institutions which have so far announced their intention to send back their Benin Bronzes.
The Scottish university claimed that the bronzes had been seized in ‘reprehensible circumstances.’
That decision put pressure on the British Museum, which holds hundreds of the pieces, to follow suit.
Late last year, France approved the restitution of 26 items from the Kingdom of Benin.
Britain’s Acting Consul-General in the Niger Delta, James Phillips had, in December 1896, embarked on an expedition to depose the then Oba of Benin Ovonramwen, because he had “reason to hope that sufficient ivory would be found in the King’s house.”
Phillips,in a letter to Lord Salisbury, the Foreign Secretary , intended to use the funds realized from the ivory to “pay the expenses incurred in removing the King from his stool.”
He was accompanied by a medical officer, two trading agents and about 250 African soldiers masquerading as porters.
Phillips also sent a deceptive message to Ovonramwen about his visit to discuss ‘peace and trade’.
The Oba suggested that the trip be postponed because of an impending national festival but Phillips would not hear of it only for him and his accomplices to run into an ambush laid by Edo warriors.
All perished in the ambush save Captain Alan Maxwell Boisragon, Commandant of the Constabulary of the Niger Coast Protectorate and Ralph Locke, District Commissioner of Warri.
A few days later Britain sent a force of around 1,200 Royal Marines, sailors and troops from the Niger Coast Protectorate Forces led by Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson to sack Benin.
This time the invaders overwhelmed the Benin warriors and destroyed almost everything on their part.
The Oba’s palace was looted and hundreds of priceless artefacts were shipped back to England, hundreds were later sold to other colonial powers throughout Europe and America.
Northern forest fires could accelerate climate change
BU researchers used NASA satellite imaging data to analyze 30 years of Earth's northern forests and found that fires are increasingly hampering forests' ability to capture and store atmospheric carbon
IMAGE: THE STUDY FOCUSED ON WOODED PEATLAND AND FORESTS LIKE THE LANDSCAPE PICTURED HERE NEAR THE TOWN OF WRIGLEY IN CANADA'S NORTHWEST TERRITORIES. THIS DRONE IMAGERY WAS TAKEN BY THEN-BU PHD... view more
CREDIT: COURTESY OF JONATHAN WANG
New research indicates that the computer-based models currently used to simulate how Earth's climate will change in the future underestimate the impact that forest fires and drying climate are having on the world's northernmost forests, which make up the largest forest biome on the planet. It's an important understanding because these northern forests absorb a significant amount of Earth's carbon dioxide.
The finding, reached by studying 30 years of the world's forests using NASA satellite imaging data, suggests that forests won't be able to sequester as much carbon as previously expected, making efforts to reduce carbon emissions all the more urgent.
"Fires are intensifying, and when forests burn, carbon is released into the atmosphere," says Boston University environmental earth scientist Mark Friedl, senior author on the study published in Nature Climate Change. "But we're also seeing longer growing seasons, warmer temperatures, which draws carbon out of the atmosphere [and into plants]. More CO2 in the atmosphere acts as a fertilizer, increasing growth of trees and plants—so, scientifically, there's been this big question out there: What is happening on a global scale to Earth's forests? Will they continue to absorb as much carbon as they do now?"
Today's forests capture about 30 percent of all human-related CO2 emissions, which Friedl calls a "huge buffer on anthropogenic climate change." The new study, however, reveals that scientists have so far been underestimating the impact that fires and other disturbances—like timber harvests—are having on Earth's northern forests and, at the same time, have been overestimating the growth-enhancing effect of climate warming and rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
"Current Earth systems models appear to be misrepresenting a big chunk of the global biosphere. These models simulate the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere, and our results suggest [the model-based simulation of northern forests] has been way off," says Friedl, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth and environment and interim director of BU's Center for Remote Sensing. He is an expert in utilizing satellite imaging data to monitor Earth's ecosystems on a global scale.
"It is not enough for a forest to absorb and store carbon in its wood and soils. For that to be a real benefit, the forest has to remain intact—an increasing challenge in a warming, more fire-prone climate," says Jonathan Wang, the paper's lead author. "The far north is home to vast, dense stores of carbon that are very sensitive to climate change, and it will take a lot of monitoring and effort to make sure these forests and their carbon stores remain intact."
Working on his PhD in Friedl's lab, Wang researched new ways to leverage the record of data collected from the long-standing Landsat program, a joint NASA/US Geological Survey mission that has been extensively imaging Earth's surface from satellites for decades, to understand how Earth's forests are changing. Wang says new computational and machine learning techniques for combining large remote sensing datasets have become much more advanced, "enabling the monitoring of even the most remote ecosystems with unprecedented detail."
He developed a method to gain richer information from 30 years of Landsat data by comparing it with more recent measurements from NASA's ICESat mission, a satellite carrying laser-based imaging technology, called LiDAR, that can detect the height of vegetation within a forest. Landsat, on the other hand, primarily detects forest cover but not how tall the trees are.
Comparing the newer LiDAR measurements with imaging data gathered from Landsat during the same time period, the team then worked backwards to calculate how tall and dense the vegetation was over the last three decades. They could then determine how the biomass in Earth's northern forests has changed over time—revealing that the forests have been losing more biomass than expected due to increasingly frequent and extensive forest fires.
Specifically, Friedl says, the forests are losing conifers, trees that are emblematic of Earth's northern forests, and for good reason. "Fires come in and burn, and then the most opportunistic types of species grow back first—like hardwoods—which then get replaced by conifers such as black spruce," he says. "But over the last 30 years, which isn't a long time frame in the context of climate change, we see fires taking out more forests, and we see hardwoods sticking around longer rather than being replaced by conifers."
Conifers are better adapted to cold climates than hardwoods, which could potentially be contributing to the dwindling overall biomass of the forests.
"An often-stated argument against climate action is the supposed benefits that far northern ecosystems and communities will enjoy from increased warmth," Wang says. He hopes the study's discovery will help people understand that the global climate crisis has serious issues for the far north, as well. "It may be greening, in some sense," he says, "but in reality the climate-driven increase in wildfires is undoing much of the potential benefits of a warming, greening north."
Wang and Friedl's findings shed light on a question that would have been difficult to answer without the help of NASA's "eyes in the sky."
"Fire regimens are changing because of climate, and many areas of the world's forests are in uninhabited areas where the effects of intense fires may not be easily noticed," Friedl says. "When big chunks of real estate in places like California go up in flames, that gets our attention. But northern forests, which hold some of the largest stocks of carbon in the world, are being impacted by fires more than we realized until now."
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Additional authors on the study include James Randerson, faculty member of UC Irvine Earth System Science; BU alum Mary Farina, now a PhD candidate at Montana State University; and Alessandro Baccini, research professor in BU's Center for Remote Sensing.
New view of species interactions offers clues to preserve threatened ecosystems
Analysis reveals complex forest connections that underscore diversity's role in protecting ecosystem health
IMAGE: A BLUE MAGPIE (UROCISSA ORNATE), NATIVE TO THE RAINFORESTS OF SRI LANKA, WAS PHOTOGRAPHED NEAR THE SINHARAJA FOREST RESERVE, A WORLD HERITAGE SITE THAT WAS PART A NEW STUDY OF... view more
CREDIT: CHRISTOPHER WILLS, UC SAN DIEGO
As the health of ecosystems in regions around the globe declines due to a variety of rising threats, scientists continue to seek clues to help prevent future collapses.
A new analysis by scientists from around the world, led by a researcher at the University of California San Diego, is furthering science's understanding of species interactions and how diversity contributes to the preservation of ecosystem health.
A coalition of 49 researchers examined a deep well of data describing tree species in forests located across a broad range of countries, ecosystems and latitudes. Information about the 16 forest diversity plots in Panama, China, Sri Lanka, Puerto Rico and other locations--many in remote, inaccessible areas--had been collected by hundreds of scientists and students over decades.
Lead researcher Christopher Wills, an evolutionary biologist and professor emeritus in the UC San Diego Division of Biological Sciences, says the new study addresses large questions about these complex ecosystems--made up of trees, animals, insects and even bacteria and viruses--and how such stunning diversity is maintained to support the health of the forest.
The new analysis, believed to be the most detailed study of such an enormous set of ecological data, is published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.
"Observational and experimental evidence shows that all ecosystems are characterized by strong interactions between and among their many species. These webs of interactions can be important contributors to the preservation of ecosystem diversity," said Wills.
The authors note, however, that many of these interactions--including those involving microscopic pathogens and the chemical defenses mounted by their prey--are not easy to identify and analyze in ecosystems that feature tens to hundreds of millions of inhabitants.
The researchers employed a detailed computational tool to extract hidden details from the forest census data. Their new "equal-area-annulus" method identifies pairs and groups of tree species that show unusually high or low levels of between-species interactions affecting their recruitment, mortality and growth. The authors found, unexpectedly, that closely-related pairs of tree species in a forest often interact weakly with each other, while distantly-related pairs can often interact with surprising strength. Such new information enables the design of further fieldwork and experiments to identify the many other species of organisms that have the potential to influence these interactions. These studies will in turn pave a path to understanding the roles of these webs of interactions in ecosystem stability.
Most of the thousands of significant interactions that the new analysis revealed were of types that give advantages to the tree species if they are rare. The advantages disappear, however, when those species become common. Some well-studied examples of such disappearing advantages involve diseases of certain species of tree. These specialized diseases are less likely to spread when their host trees are rare, and more likely to spread when the hosts are plentiful. Such interaction patterns can help to maintain many different host tree species simultaneously in an ecosystem.
"We explored how our method can be used to identify the between-species interactions that play the largest roles in the maintenance of ecosystems and their diversity," said Wills. "The interplay we have found between and among species helps to explain how the numerous species in these complex ecosystems can buffer the ecosystems against environmental changes, enabling the ecosystems themselves to survive."
Moving forward, the scientists plan to continue using the data to help tease out specific influences that are essential to ecosystem health.
"We want to show how we can maintain the diversity of the planet at the same time as we are preserving ecosystems that will aid our own survival," said Wills.
CAPTION
Mora excelsa trees with giant buttresses form a prominent part of the pristine rainforest of Guyana.
CREDIT
Christopher Wills, UC San Diego
The full coauthor list includes: Christopher Wills, Bin Wang, Shuai Fang, Yunquan Wang, Yi Jin, James Lutz, Jill Thompson, Kyle Harms, Sandeep Pulla, Bonifacio Pasion, Sara Germain, Heming Liu, Joseph Smokey, Sheng-Hsin Su, Nathalie Butt, Chengjin Chu, George Chuyong, Chia-Hao Chang-Yang, H. S. Dattaraja, Stuart Davies, Sisira Ediriweera, Shameema Esufali, Christine Dawn Fletcher, Nimal Gunatilleke, Savi Gunatilleke, Chang-Fu Hsieh, Fangliang He, Stephen Hubbell, Zhanqing Hao, Akira Itoh, David Kenfack, Buhang Li, Xiankun Li, Keping Ma, Michael Morecroft, Xiangcheng Mi, Yadvinder Malhi, Perry Ong, Lillian Jennifer Rodriguez, H. S. Suresh, I Fang Sun, Raman Sukumar, Sylvester Tan, Duncan Thomas, Maria Uriarte, Xihua Wang, Xugao Wang, T.L. Yao, Jess Zimmermann.
MUTUAL AID
CAPTION
At Manu Park in Peru, ants are seen fiercely protecting a young Cecropia tree. Such mutually beneficial interactions are an essential part of ecosystem diversity.
IMAGE: MUSER ON THE GRASSLAND IN INNER MONGOLIA, CHINA view more
CREDIT: NAOC
Prof. YAN Yihua and his research team from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) recently released detailed results of observations by the new generation solar radio telescope--Mingantu Spectral Radio Heliograph (MUSER)--from 2014 to 2019.
The study was published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences on March 29. It may help us better understand the basic nature of solar eruptions.
Solar radio bursts are associated with different types of powerful eruptions like solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and various thermal and nonthermal processes. They are prompt indicators of disastrous space weather events.
Solar radio observations, especially at centimeter and decimeter wavelengths, play an important role in revealing the key physics behind primary energy release, particle acceleration and transportation. They also help identify crucial precursors of solar storms.
As the most powerful solar radio telescope in the world today, MUSER consists of 100 antennas spread over three spiral-shaped arms with a maximum baseline length of 3 km on the grassland in Inner Mongolia.
Its configuration is optimized to meet the needs of observing the full solar disk over an ultrawide frequency range of 0.4-15 gigahertz. Its images offer a temporal resolution of 25-200 milliseconds, spatial resolution of 1.3-51.6 arcseconds, spectral resolution of 25 megahertz and a high dynamic range of 25 decibels.
MUSER provides a unique, powerful tool for measuring solar magnetic fields and tracing the dynamic evolution of energetic electrons in a wide frequency range, which will help scientists better understand the origin of various solar activities and the basic drivers of space weather.
From MUSER, scientists can capture the most sensitive radio signals of even very small solar eruptive events. The observations also yield images of solar magnetic fields from the solar chromosphere up to the higher corona.
"MUSER, with its extension to metric and decametric wavelengths, will further play the role of new generation radio heliograph. It will become the leading solar-dedicated radio facility in the world for solar physics and space weather studies," said Prof. YAN, chief scientist of Solar Physics at NAOC and the first author of the study.
CAPTION
Superfine spectral structure of a very small flare observed by MUSER
CREDIT
NAOC
eNeuro publishes commentaries onupcoming documentary "In Silico"
Special collection provides additional perspective on brain modelling and collaborative neuroscience
IMAGE: EPISTEMOLOGICAL LESSONS FROM THE BLUE AND HUMAN BRAIN PROJECTS view more
CREDIT: ENEURO 2021
eNeuro is publishing a special collection of commentaries on April 30, 2021 on the neuroscience documentary In Silico. The collection, titled "Epistemological Lessons from the Blue and Human Brain Projects," features reactions to the documentary from leading neuroscientists as well as a discussion on brain modelling and massive research collaborations in general.
Noah Hutton's In Silico follows neuroscientist Henry Markram and his attempt to develop a computer model of the brain. The collaboration, called The Human Brain Project, received €1 billion in funding and pledged to build a full model within ten years. The documentary chronicles Markram and his team as the project stirs up controversy and fails to meet its deadline.
The special collection from eNeuro discusses the documentary and the larger issues surrounding brain modelling. The commentaries include:
What In Silico got wrong, from the perspective of Human Brain Project scientists
Next steps for large-scale, collaborative neuroscience initiatives
How charismatic leaders shape the field
The history and science of building brain models
"The movie is an excuse to think more broadly about how to approach the study of brain function," said Christophe Bernard, editor-in-chief of eNeuro, "and what modelling the brain means." The eNeuro special collection and In Silico will be available online on April 30, 2021.
About eNeuro
eNeuro is an online, open-access journal published by the Society for Neuroscience. Established in 2014, eNeuro publishes a wide variety of content, including research articles, short reports, reviews, commentaries and opinions.
About The Society for Neuroscience
The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 37,000 members in more than 90 countries and over 130 chapters worldwide
Factors Associated With General Surgery Residents’ Operative Experience During the COVID-19 Pandemic
JAMA Surg. Published online April 30, 2021. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2021.1978
Key Points
QuestionHow did general surgery resident operative volume change during the first 4 months of the US COVID-19 pandemic, and were all postgraduate year levels equally affected?
FindingsIn this review of 1358 resident case logs, general surgery resident operative volume declined by 33.5% in March to June 2020 compared with March to June 2018 and 2019 and affected residents in every level of training.
MeaningThese findings illustrate the significant negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on general surgery resident operative experience, highlighting the importance of identifying future mitigation strategies.
Abstract
ImportanceThe suspension of elective operations in March 2020 to prepare for the COVID-19 surge posed significant challenges to resident education. To mitigate the potential negative effects of COVID-19 on surgical education, it is important to quantify how the pandemic influenced resident operative volume.
ObjectiveTo examine the association of the pandemic with general surgical residents’ operative experience by postgraduate year (PGY) and case type and to evaluate if certain institutional characteristics were associated with a greater decline in surgical volume.
Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis retrospective review included residents’ operative logs from 3 consecutive academic years (2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020) from 16 general surgery programs. Data collected included total major cases, case type, and PGY. Faculty completed a survey about program demographics and COVID-19 response. Data on race were not collected. Operative volumes from March to June 2020 were compared with the same period during 2018 and 2019. Data were analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis test adjusted for within-program correlations.
Main Outcome and MeasuresTotal major cases performed by each resident during the first 4 months of the pandemic.
ResultsA total of 1368 case logs were analyzed. There was a 33.5% reduction in total major cases performed in March to June 2020 compared with 2018 and 2019 (45.0 [95% CI, 36.1-53.9] vs 67.7 [95% CI, 62.0-72.2]; P < .001), which significantly affected every PGY. All case types were significantly reduced in 2020 except liver, pancreas, small intestine, and trauma cases. There was a 10.2% reduction in operative volume during the 2019-2020 academic year compared with the 2 previous years (192.3 [95% CI, 178.5-206.1] vs 213.8 [95% CI, 203.6-223.9]; P < .001). Level 1 trauma centers (49.5 vs 68.5; 27.7%) had a significantly lower reduction in case volume than non–level 1 trauma centers (33.9 vs 63.0; 46%) (P = .03).
Conclusions and RelevanceIn this study of operative logs of general surgery residents in 16 US programs from 2017 to 2020, the first 4 months of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a significant reduction in operative experience, which affected every PGY and most case types. Level 1 trauma centers were less affected than non–level 1 centers. If this trend continues, the effect on surgical training may be even more detrimental.
IMAGE: REPRESENTATIVE IMAGES OF VASCULAR ENDOTHELIAL CONTROL CELLS (LEFT) AND CELLS TREATED WITH THE SARS-COV-2 SPIKE PROTEIN (RIGHT) SHOW THAT THE SPIKE PROTEIN CAUSES INCREASED MITOCHONDRIAL FRAGMENTATION IN VASCULAR CELLS.... view more
CREDIT: SALK INSTITUTE
LA JOLLA--(April 30, 2021) Scientists have known for a while that SARS-CoV-2's distinctive "spike" proteins help the virus infect its host by latching on to healthy cells. Now, a major new study shows that they also play a key role in the disease itself.
The paper, published on April 30, 2021, in Circulation Research, also shows conclusively that COVID-19 is a vascular disease, demonstrating exactly how the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages and attacks the vascular system on a cellular level. The findings help explain COVID-19's wide variety of seemingly unconnected complications, and could open the door for new research into more effective therapies.
"A lot of people think of it as a respiratory disease, but it's really a vascular disease," says Assistant Research Professor Uri Manor, who is co-senior author of the study. "That could explain why some people have strokes, and why some people have issues in other parts of the body. The commonality between them is that they all have vascular underpinnings."
Salk researchers collaborated with scientists at the University of California San Diego on the paper, including co-first author Jiao Zhang and co-senior author John Shyy, among others.
While the findings themselves aren't entirely a surprise, the paper provides clear confirmation and a detailed explanation of the mechanism through which the protein damages vascular cells for the first time. There's been a growing consensus that SARS-CoV-2 affects the vascular system, but exactly how it did so was not understood. Similarly, scientists studying other coronaviruses have long suspected that the spike protein contributed to damaging vascular endothelial cells, but this is the first time the process has been documented.
In the new study, the researchers created a "pseudovirus" that was surrounded by SARS-CoV-2 classic crown of spike proteins, but did not contain any actual virus. Exposure to this pseudovirus resulted in damage to the lungs and arteries of an animal model--proving that the spike protein alone was enough to cause disease. Tissue samples showed inflammation in endothelial cells lining the pulmonary artery walls.
The team then replicated this process in the lab, exposing healthy endothelial cells (which line arteries) to the spike protein. They showed that the spike protein damaged the cells by binding ACE2. This binding disrupted ACE2's molecular signaling to mitochondria (organelles that generate energy for cells), causing the mitochondria to become damaged and fragmented.
Previous studies have shown a similar effect when cells were exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this is the first study to show that the damage occurs when cells are exposed to the spike protein on its own.
"If you remove the replicating capabilities of the virus, it still has a major damaging effect on the vascular cells, simply by virtue of its ability to bind to this ACE2 receptor, the S protein receptor, now famous thanks to COVID," Manor explains. "Further studies with mutant spike proteins will also provide new insight towards the infectivity and severity of mutant SARS CoV-2 viruses."
The researchers next hope to take a closer look at the mechanism by which the disrupted ACE2 protein damages mitochondria and causes them to change shape.
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Other authors on the study are Yuyang Lei and Zu-Yi Yuan of Jiaotong University in Xi'an, China; Cara R. Schiavon, Leonardo Andrade, and Gerald S. Shadel of Salk; Ming He, Hui Shen, Yichi Zhang, Yoshitake Cho, Mark Hepokoski, Jason X.-J. Yuan, Atul Malhotra, Jin Zhang of the University of California San Diego; Lili Chen, Qian Yin, Ting Lei, Hongliang Wang and Shengpeng Wang of Xi'an Jiatong University Health Science Center in Xi'an, China.
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Shaanxi Natural Science Fund, the National Key Research and Development Program, the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University; and Xi'an Jiaotong University.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
Every cure has a starting point. The Salk Institute embodies Jonas Salk's mission to dare to make dreams into reality. Its internationally renowned and award-winning scientists explore the very foundations of life, seeking new understandings in neuroscience, genetics, immunology, plant biology and more. The Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark: small by choice, intimate by nature and fearless in the face of any challenge. Be it cancer or Alzheimer's, aging or diabetes, Salk is where cures begin. Learn more at: salk.edu.
