New details of Tully monster revealed

The Tully monster.
Discovered in the 1950s and first described in a paper in 1966, the Tully monster, with its stalked eyes and long proboscis, is difficult to compare to all other known animal groups. Unique to Illinois in the U.S., it became its state fossil in 1989.
Image Credit: © 2023 Takahiro Sakono

For more than half a century, the Tully monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium), an enigmatic animal that lived about 300 million years ago, has confounded paleontologists, with its strange anatomy making it difficult to classify. Recently, a group of researchers proposed a hypothesis that Tullimonstrum was a vertebrate similar to cyclostomes (jawless fish like lamprey and hagfish). If it was, then the Tully monster would potentially fill a gap in the evolutionary history of early vertebrates. Studies so far have both supported and rejected this hypothesis. Now, using 3D imaging technology, a team in Japan believes it has found the answer after uncovering detailed characteristics of the Tully monster which strongly suggest that it was not a vertebrate. However, its exact classification and what type of invertebrate it was is still to be decided.

In the 1950s, Francis Tully was enjoying his hobby fossil hunting in a site known as Mazon Creek Lagerstätte in the U.S. state of Illinois, when he discovered what would later become known as the Tully monster. This 15-centimeter (on average), 300-million-year-old marine “monster” turned out to be an enigma, as ever since its discovery researchers have debated where it fits in the classification of living things (its taxonomic position). Unlike dinosaur bones and hard-shelled creatures that are often found as fossils, the Tully monster was soft-bodied. The Mazon Creek Lagerstätte is one of the few places in the world where the conditions were just right for imprints of these marine animals to be captured in detail in the underwater mud, before they could decay. In 2016, a group of scientists in the US proposed a hypothesis that the Tully monster was a vertebrate. If this was the case, then it could be a missing piece of the puzzle on how vertebrates evolved.

2022 Tongan volcanic explosion was largest natural explosion in over a century

On January 14, 2022, at approximately 4:20am local time UTC a huge eruption occurred at the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano, located about 65km (40 miles) north of Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, which is part of a vast arc of volcanoes and ocean trenches known as the Pacific “Ring of Fire”. 
Image Credit: © 2022 European Space Agency - ESA, produced from ESA remote sensing data, image processed by ESA. Radiometrically enhanced by the University of Miami Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS)

The 2022 eruption of a submarine volcano in Tonga was more powerful than the largest U.S. nuclear explosion, according to a new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation.  

The 15-megaton volcanic explosion from Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, one of the largest natural explosions in more than a century, generated a mega-tsunami with waves up to 45-meters high (148 feet) along the coast of Tonga’s Tofua Island and waves up to 17 meters (56 feet) on Tongatapu, the country’s most populated island.

Drug form of traditional Chinese medicine compound improved survival of mice with brain tumors

Indirubin is a natural product present in indigo plants and the active ingredient of the traditional Chinese medicine Dang Gui Long Hui Wan, which is used to treat chronic diseases.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Brown University

A new study shows how a drug made from a natural compound used in traditional Chinese medicine works against malignant brain tumors in mice, creating a promising avenue of research for glioblastoma treatment.

In the study, published in Cell Reports Medicine, researchers showed how a formulation of the compound, called indirubin, improved the survival of mice with malignant brain tumors. They also tested a new formulation that was easier to administer, taking the potential pharmaceutical approach one step closer to clinical trials with human participants.  

“The interesting thing about this drug is that it targets a number of important hallmarks of the disease,” said Sean Lawler, lead author, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and researcher at the Legorreta Cancer Center of Brown University. “That's appealing because this type of cancer keeps finding ways around individual mechanisms of attack. So, if we use multiple mechanisms of attack at once, perhaps that will be more successful.”

New study finds that microplastics can help dangerous bacteria survive on beaches

Microplastics on the beach
Photo Credit: Vera Kratochvil

New research from the University of Stirling has found that dangerous bacteria are able to survive the journey from sewage treatment plants to beaches on microplastic pollution.

During their study, scientists from the University’s Faculty of Natural Sciences found drug-resistant bacteria colonizing microplastics on Scottish beaches.  

The findings could have global consequences, with an estimated 2.3 million tons of plastic pollution thought to be floating in the world’s oceans.

Lead researcher Rebecca Metcalf, supervised by Professor Richard Quilliam, conducted her research by subjecting microplastics colonized by bacteria in wastewater to the different environments that they would likely pass through on their way to our beaches. She found that not only could the bacteria such as E. coli survive the entire journey, but that viable bacteria also survived for seven days on the sand. 

Researchers invent novel ingestible capsule X-ray dosimeter for real-time radiotherapy monitoring

Prof Liu Xiaogang (left) and Dr Hou Bo from the NUS Department of Chemistry were key members of the team that developed the novel capsule dosimeter.
Photo Credit: National University of Singapore

Affordable and ingestible capsule monitors radiation dose, pH and temperature in the gastrointestinal tract in real time, and could benefit gastric cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy

Gastric cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide. A new invention by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) could help improve the treatment of this cancer by enhancing the precision of radiotherapy, which is commonly used in combination with treatment options such as surgery, chemotherapy or immunotherapy.

In the field of modern radiotherapy, precision in targeting tumor tissue while minimizing damage to healthy tissue is crucial. However, low efficacy and variable outcomes remain a challenge due to patient diversity, treatment uncertainty, and differences in delivery types. Monitoring the dose of radiation delivered and absorbed in real-time, particularly in the gastrointestinal tract, could enhance the precision of radiotherapy to improve its effectiveness, but it is difficult to achieve. Additionally, existing methods used for monitoring biochemical indicators such as pH and temperature are inadequate for comprehensive evaluation of radiotherapy.

Location intelligence shines a light on disinformation

Each dot represents a Twitterer discussing COVID-19 from April 16 to April 22, 2021. The closer the dots are to the center, the greater the influence. The brighter the color, the stronger the intent.
Image Credit: ORNL

Using disinformation to create political instability and battlefield confusion dates back millennia.

However, today’s disinformation actors use social media to amplify disinformation that users knowingly or, more often, unknowingly perpetuate. Such disinformation spreads quickly, threatening public health and safety. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic and recent global elections have given the world a front-row seat to this form of modern warfare.

A group at ORNL now studies such threats thanks to the evolution at the lab of location intelligence, or research that uses open data to understand places and the factors that influence human activity in them. In the past, location intelligence has informed emergency response, urban planning, transportation planning, energy conservation and policy decisions. Now, location intelligence at ORNL also helps identify disinformation, or shared information that is intentionally misleading, and its impacts.

Personalized Gut Microbiome Analysis for Colorectal Cancer Classification with Explainable AI

Explainable AI offers a promising solution for finding links between diseases and certain species of gut bacteria, finds a research team at Tokyo Tech. Using a concept borrowed from game theory, the researchers developed a framework that reveals which bacterial species are closely associated with colorectal cancer in individual subjects, providing a more reliable way to find and characterize disease subgroups and identify biomarkers in the gut microbiome.

The gut microbiome comprises a complex population of different bacterial species that are essential to human health. In recent years, scientists across several fields have found that changes in the gut microbiome can be linked to a wide variety of diseases, notably colorectal cancer (CRC). Multiple studies have revealed that a higher abundance of certain bacteria, such as Fusobacterium nucleatum and Parvimonas micra, is typically associated with CRC progression.

Microscopic Syringes for Stressed Out Strep

Slide culture of a Streptomyces
Photo Credit: Public Domain 

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba find that Streptomyces phage tail-like particles are located intracellularly, unlike other contractile injections systems, and protect the bacterium against osmotic stress

Everyone can use a little stress relief, even bacteria. Now, researchers from Japan have found that a bacterial nanomachine with an unusual cellular location can protect cells from stressful environments.

In a study published recently in mSphere, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have revealed that a protein complex related to phage tail-like secretion systems is expressed intracellularly in a model Gram-positive organism and protects it from osmotic stress.

Many types of bacteria contain genes encoding phage tail-like nanomachines called contractile injection systems (CISs). These systems are essentially little syringes that the bacteria produce and release into their environment to contact other cells and inject their contents.

Hundreds of thousands of fungi are denied scientific names

Drying soil samples immediately upon collection under field conditions in Norway.
Photo Credit: Sten Anslan

Fungi that do not form fruiting bodies and that we can’t cultivate in the laboratory cannot be given scientific names. This has left them essentially ignored by science. In a study coordinated from the university of Gothenburg, researchers analyzed a large dataset of fungal DNA sequences from global soil samples and found that these intangible fungi seem to dominate the fungal kingdom.

The concept of dark biodiversity denotes species that are recovered through DNA sequencing of substrates such as soil and water – but where no individuals of those species have ever been observed.

It has been known for more than a decade that the fungal kingdom is home to dark biodiversity, but the magnitude of this dark fungal diversity has been the subject of much speculation. A new study from the University of Gothenburg, published in the journal MycoKeys, addresses the question based on 8 million fungal DNA sequences from global soil sampling. The study turns our understanding of the fungi on its head by showing that the fungal kingdom may be almost exclusively dark.

How a photon becomes four charge carriers

Illustration of exciton cleavage in the organic semiconductor pentacene consisting of five benzene rings. Instead of the usually two free charge carriers, four free charge carriers, represented by orange orbits, are generated by absorbing a photon in pentacene.
Photo Credit: Technical University of Berlin

Some materials convert photons into more charge carriers than would be expected. With an ultra-fast film, researchers have now been able to get an idea of this process. Physicists from the University of Würzburg were there.

Photovoltaics, i.e. The conversion of light into electricity is a key technology in the sustainable generation of energy. Since Max Planck and Albert Einstein, it has been known that both light and electricity occur in tiny, quantized packages: on the one hand in the form of photons and on the other hand as elementary charges in the form of electrons and holes.

Better solar cells thanks to exciton splitting

In the material of a conventional solar cell, the energy of a single photon is transferred to two free charges, nothing more. However, some molecular materials such as pentacene show an exception to this rule and instead convert a photon into four charges. This excitation doubling, which is referred to as exciton fission, is of great benefit for the highly efficient photovoltaics, in particular to improve the prevailing technologies based on silicon.