Fifty genome sequences reveal breast cancer's complexity 3 The amazing disappearing antineutrino 5 The drying of East Africa 7 China vows to clean up rural environment 9 Developing world: Educating India 11 Major Step in Improving Forecasts of Weather Extremes Such as Floods and Droughts 16 Climate Scientists Forecast Permanently Hotter Summers 18 Material Turns Hard or Soft at the Touch of a Button 20 Carbon Release to Atmosphere 10 Times Faster Than in the Past, Geologists Find 22 New Solar System Formation Models Indicate Jupiter's Foray Robbed Mars of Mass 24 Show Importance of Visual Stimulation in Wiring Up Species' Brains to See 26 Neuroscientists Map a New Target to Wipe Pain Away 29 Physicists Store Antimatter Atoms for 1,000 Seconds -- And Still Counting 31 Could a Birth Control Pill for Men Be on the Horizon? 33 DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows 35 Higher Density Means World Forests Are Capturing More Carbon 37 Nanotechnologists Must Take Lessons from Nature 39 Low-Cost Wireless Sensor Networks Open New Horizons for the Internet of Things 41 New Supernova Shows Signs of Atypical Composition 43 What, Me Worry? Young Adults Get Self-Esteem Boost from Debt 45 Insulin Action in the Brain Can Lead to Obesity: 47 More Men With Migraine Suffer from PTSD Than Women, Study Finds 49 New Imaging Technique to Reveal Complex Microbial Interactions 51 Perfect Welds for Car Bodies 53 Darkness Stifles Reproduction of Surface-Dwelling Fish 55 Will Global Climate Change Enhance Boreal Forest Growth? 57 Improve Schools: Treat students like prisoners 59 Pain of Ostracism Can Be Deep, Long-Lasting 61 Severity of Facial Wrinkles May Predict Bone Density in Early Menopause 63 Precision-Tinted Lenses Offer Real Migraine Relief, Reveals New Study 64 What the Margins of Spain's Ebro River Basin Looked Like 6 Million Years Ago 66 Yo-Yo Dieting Vs. Obesity? Dieters May Be Healthier, Live Longer, Study Suggests 68 Neutron Analysis Explains Dynamics Behind Best Thermoelectric Materials 70 Deciding to Stay or Go Is a Deep-Seated Brain Function 72 Scanning the Skies for Debris Hazards 74 Findings Could Aid Hydraulic Fracturing, Other Fluid Extraction Techniques 76 Experts Recommend Screening for Vitamin D Deficiency in at-Risk Populations 78 New Strategy to Attack Tumor-Feeding Blood Vessels 80 Zooplankton Main Fare for Arctic Cod, Marine Birds and Bowhead Whales 82 Role for Cell Scaffold in Tumor Formation 84 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Ultra-Cold Rubidium Atoms to Probe and Image Nanostructured Surfaces 86 CERN Experiment Traps Antimatter Atoms for 1000 Seconds 88 Canadian Researchers Instrumental in Game-Changing Antimatter Study 90 These bones were made for walking 92 ‗The End of Internationalization?‘ 94 Could Pirates Be Your Friends? 95 Butchering dinner 3.4 million years ago 97 Tobacco-Free Is No Panacea 100 'Turn Your Zzz's Into A's' 102 Promoting 'Consumer Friendly' Transfer 104 How women bend over backwards for baby 106 The E-Reader Effect 108 Marshes and Sea Level Rise 110 3D Proteins--Getting the Big Picture 112 Air Quality Worsened by Paved Surfaces 114 'Library of Fishes' to Feature Thousands of Specimens from Remote Locations 117 Jellyfish Blooms Transfer Food Energy From Fish to Bacteria 119 Carbon release to atmosphere 10 times faster than in the past 121 X-ray Fingerprints to Study the Eating Habits of Giant Black Holes 122 Old Buildings Combine Sustainability, Preservation 126 The Last Mountain: A Scary Movie About … Coal 128 Scientists discover how "Didymo" algae bloom in pristine waters with few nutrients 130 Morally laden scenarios get different responses from people of different ages. 132 New Map Reveals Giant Fjords Beneath East Antarctic Ice Sheet 134 Largest Biochemical Circuit Out of Small Synthetic DNA Molecules 135 CMU Researchers Uncover How the Brain Processes Faces 138 Human ancestors in Eurasia earlier than thought 140 Hungarian natural history under threat 142 Chronic fatigue syndrome: life after XMRV 144 Moving mirrors make light from nothing 147 A molecular calculator 149 A quantum take on certainty 151 Female australopiths seek brave new world 153 Subterranean worms from hell 155 Sarcasm Boosts Creativity? Yeah, Right. 157 You Are What You (Think) You Eat 159 Can Watching ‗Jackass‘ Turn You Into One? 161 A new eye on biodiversity 163 Value of disease clues often exaggerated 165 Roman ship had on-board fish tank 167 Comic Study 169 After 90 years, U. of C. completes dictionary documenting humanity‘s earliest days 171 A Theory of Conspiracy Theories 173 Meet the league of extraordinary supernovae 175 Bulb In, Bulb Out 177 Gold-mine worm shows animals could be living on Mars 181 A Chronicler of the Art-Vandal Underground 183 When the multiverse and many-worlds collide 187 Into the breeches: A makeover for Longitude's villain 190 Comics 193 Land speed record bid could make space flight safer 196 Bipolar kids: Victims of the 'madness industry'? 198 2 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 161June 2011 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila Fifty genome sequences reveal breast cancer's complexity Decoding of ten trillion bases yields no simple patterns or silver bullets. Meredith Wadman Mammograms of a malignant breast tumor before (L) and after (R) 16 weeks of aromatase inhibitor therapy. The more we learn about breast cancer, the more complicated it becomes.Dr. Kim Wiele, Paul K. Commean and Joan Moulton, Electronic Radiology Laboratory, Washington University The deeper researchers dive into the genetics of breast cancer, the more complicated their discoveries. And the latest, and deepest, dive is no exception. Scientists led by Matthew Ellis at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, have sequenced the whole genomes of 50 patients' breast cancer tumours alongside matching DNA from the same patients' healthy cells in order to identify genomic alterations present only in the cancerous cells. Their findings, presented today at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Orlando, Florida, reveal that these cancers' genetic fingerprints are highly diverse; of the 1,700 gene mutations they found in total, most were unique to individual patients' tumours, and only three occurred in 10% or more. The genomic changes were also of all kinds, from single-nucleotide variations and frame shifts to translocations and deletions. "The results are complex and somewhat alarming, because the problem does make you sit down and rethink what breast cancer is," says Ellis, leader of the breast cancer programme at the university's Siteman Cancer Center. Nonetheless, he says, there is reason for optimism — not least because careful analysis of the data, combined with what is already known about the functions of the affected genes, yields a wealth of new therapeutic possibilities. Big science The sheer volume of the scientists' enterprise is impressive: they sequenced and analysed more than ten trillion bases, using a supercomputer of a power similar to that of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe's premier physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. The tumours sequenced, with average 30-fold coverage, were from oestrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers. They came from participants of two clinical 3 Infoteca’s E-Journal No. 161June 2011 Sistema de Infotecas Centrales Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila trials of oestrogen-lowering drugs known as aromatase inhibitors. Patients with breast cancer who are not responsive to these drugs have significantly worse outcomes, although the molecular basis for this is poorly understood. The scientists hoped that, by comparing the genome sequences of oestrogen-sensitive tumours (26 of the 50) to oestrogen-resistant cancers (24), they might find clues to the pathological basis for the difference. They did find at least one association — for the breast-cancer-suppressor gene MAP3K1, the protein product of which accelerates programmed cell death. Mutations that disable this gene allow cells that should die to remain living. MAP3K1 mutations were present in about 10% of the tumours, and seemed to be associated with the aromatase inhibitor-sensitive, more favorable, type of disease, particularly when the same cancer carried another, previously described mutation in a gene called PIK3CA. This was one of two mutations already associated with breast cancer that occurred frequently in the 50 tumours: PIK3CA was found in 43% of samples and the tumour suppressor TP53 turned up in about 15%. All told, about half the cancers carried a combination of these three mutations — leaving half with cancers arising from varying constellations of much rarer mutations. Ellis says that the complexity of their results indicates that when it comes to developing therapeutics "very clearly the only way forward is the genome-first approach. No single blockbuster drug will answer the problem of endocrine-therapy resistance". He adds that, because breast cancer is so common, even treatments targeting pathological mechanisms triggered by relatively rare mutations could benefit many thousands of women "The fact they have sequenced cancers in the context of a clinical trial, that's what's really significant here," says Samuel Aparicio, a breast cancer researcher at the University of British Columbia and the BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver, Canada. This is because clinical trial data allow scientists to relate genomic findings to detailed data on, for instance, patient survival. "One knows exactly what happened to those patients," says Aparicio. Ellis, for his part, says that he has already begun his next step: to repeat the experiment on at least 1,000 more tumours. "It's complicated and we're going to have to do many many more cases to understand how this all works," he says. "But certainly we have the methodology to begin to sort it out." http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110402/full/news.2011.203.html 4 Infoteca’s E-Journal No.