​Transparent mice and how they could revolutionize cancer treatment. Researchers have discovered traces of the oldest glacier ever discovered. There is no doubt that humans arrived in Brazil at least 27,000 years ago

Transparent mice and how they could revolutionize cancer treatment

You’ve probably heard of fish or other transparent sea creatures that evolution, in its probabilistic wisdom, has created over time. However, he did not create transparent mice, but some researchers from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich together with their colleagues from the university hospital there, as they themselves inform us in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

The idea is not new, something similar has already been tried, and we will immediately explain why. It is indisputable that the German specialists managed to bring everything to an unprecedented level. And this brings huge benefits.

The purpose of creating transparent laboratory mice was to closely observe cancer cells and how they develop. Then more effective methods of treatment are used. Molecules are already known to work wonders against cancer, but it’s more in a petri dish. Once in the body, they begin to malfunction, even causing more harm than good.

In addition, it is difficult to identify cancerous tumors, especially if they are very small. Well, hence the need to create transparent guinea pigs in which both cancer cells and the effectiveness of various treatments could be observed in detail.

Returning to what the German specialists did, it should be said that this is an innovative scanning method called WildDISCO. What is she doing? First, genetically modified mice are needed. They are injected with a solution, a mixture of chemicals, which removes not only fat, but also pigments in the fabric. Thus, mice look like glass. Biological bottle. By the way, they are no longer alive.

Then they are injected with antibodies, also modified for fluorescence. In this way, an incredibly detailed map of the body is obtained, and cancer cells can be observed much more easily. In addition, you can study and understand how they developed. Ultimately, a much more effective treatment can be applied.

Now you realize that this technique only works on dead mice so far. It cannot be applied to humans for an easily understood reason. There’s no point in treating a person, because you’ve already killed them. But… it should be kept in mind that this is only the first step. Small for a mouse, but huge for mankind.

The authors of the study even emphasize that this is the first step in creating much more efficient scanning methods that can be applied to humans. From this point of view, the future sounds promising.

Researchers have discovered traces of the oldest glacier ever discovered

A group of geologists from the University of Johannesburg announced today in a study published in the specialized journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters that they managed to find traces of a glacier at least 2.9 billion years ago. It may not seem like much, but it is certainly the oldest glacier ever discovered and known to us.

The glacier, obviously, no longer exists since the world and the earth, this word comes. Instead, what remains are his moraines, or materials transported and left behind by him over time. In fact, they have remained almost intact and unchanged since 2.9 billion years ago, making this geological formation, also called the Pongola Supergroup, unique.

The age of the rocks was determined after analyzing oxygen isotopes (oxygen-18 and oxygen-17), but it was also possible to reconstruct the environment in which the corresponding geological formations arose.

South African geologists do not yet know, but it is a matter of time, what factors led to the appearance of these glaciers. One hypothesis concerns the so-called “Earth as an ice ball” phenomenon. An extreme phenomenon, when our planet is almost completely covered with ice. The last such episode may have occurred about 800,000 years ago, during a geological period called the Cryogen. But it is almost certain that such episodes happened several times in Tera’s past. One of them could have happened very recently, 2.9 billion years ago.

Another hypothesis says that the continental mass on which the glacier formed would have been much closer to the South Pole than it is today. Hence the presence of ice. However, so far everything is at the level of hypotheses, because research is just beginning. But that doesn’t mean we won’t have other surprises, particularly about Earth’s geological history, as research continues.

There is no doubt that humans arrived in Brazil at least 27,000 years ago

The idea that humans could have traveled to South America in the middle of the ice age, even during the last ice age, about 27,000 years ago, has always been controversial. Also, if you think about it logically, it seems impossible to cross an ocean, be it the Atlantic (through Africa) or the Pacific (through Asia), when the cold temperatures wreak havoc on flora and fauna everywhere. And so, even if the drop in temperature was accompanied by a drop in the level of the seas and oceans.

But it seems there were people who took these giant steps. And a new proof in this sense comes from Brazil. More precisely, from a cave called Santa Elena, a cave located in the center of the country. Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists from the University of San Carlos managed to find traces of habitation there, which, as we have already said, date from the time of the last glacial maximum (about 27,000 years ago) to the beginning of the Holocene (almost 11,000 years ago). .

The most striking evidence of the presence of an anatomically modern man there is bone jewelry. A giant sloth bone. Although the bones had been known for decades, they were a mystery because no one could say for sure whether they bore the marks of human intervention or whether the perforations and smooth surface were created naturally. As I said, there were always applicants.

This time, researchers from the University of San Carlos brought them back into the limelight, so to speak, and reanalyzed them using X-ray machines and high-resolution microscopes.

The result, as we should have expected, because otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered to write about it, shows that these bones were indeed objects of decoration created by people who hunted these animals. Not only did they pierce them to be worn around the neck or tied to clothing, but their smooth surfaces, when analyzed, revealed traces of prolonged wear.

Now this problem seems to be solved. At least 27,000 years ago, people who hunted large animals lived throughout South America. So that you don’t have any more doubts and confusion about this. But one key question remains, the answer to which has major implications for the paradigm of human evolution and dispersal… where did these people come from?

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