Technical aptitude and skills are important, of course. But the ability to relate to and work with the people around you is just as crucial.

Are Human Relations Skills Important in Tech? from Ask Leo!.
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Princeton professors Hal Foster and Esther Schor have received the University’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities.

Hurricanes moving slowly over an area can cause more damage than faster-moving storms, and rising global temperatures will likely cause more hurricanes to slow down, said Princeton atmospheric scientist Gan Zhang.

Employees at the Swedish unit of the German travel conglomerate TUI are volunteering to have a microchip implanted in their hands. The technology literally opens doors, but also raises numerous ethical questions.

Wolves lack the facial muscles required to raise their eyebrows—a feature that makes dogs especially endearing to people.

Altruism is alive and well. So is the desire to protect one’s self-image.

In the late 1970s, a harbor seal named Hoover began catcalling passersby at the New England Aquarium in a thick Maine accent. A new study confirms seals’ uncanny ability to copy human speech.

A new study suggests a half-ton bird roamed Europe nearly 2 million years ago, around when our Homo predecessors were first entering the region.

A study finds that close to a trillion trees could potentially be planted on Earth—enough to sequester more than 200 billion tons of carbon. But environmental change on this scale is no easy task.

A new analysis of a skull found in Greece decades ago suggests that early humans may have been in Eurasia as early as 210,000 years ago.

New findings suggest Neanderthals evolved their unusually broad fingers after they split from Denisovans, just 400,000 years ago.

They’re not as aloof as some think.

Gut microbes react differently to raw and cooked versions of the same foods.

In a new study, brain-like organoids made from human cells were slower to mature than their chimpanzee and macaque counterparts.

But many questions remain about the true origin of the Homo sapiens species.

New findings bolster the argument that the two groups of early humans had a lot of behavioral similarities.

Humans could physically come together to confront the worst crises the last century offered. Not this one, however, and our isolation has consequences.

More humans may be exercising more flexibility and cooperation, in vaster global numbers, than at any other time in human history.

Danielle Conti, 43, used the pandemic as her personal piggy bank after allegedly stealing the charge card from 70-year-old widower Anthony Catapano while making her daily rounds at hard-hit Staten Island University Hospital North sometime in early April, authorities charge.

What do I know about anything? But these pre-measured meals are helping us kick the winter doldrums.

As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, Earth is becoming cleaner and more wild.

It seems that this season the world's highest peak will have some much needed recovery time, writes Yana Wengel

L.A. Opera streams the musical drama "Angel's Bone," filmed last year in Beijing. It's your quarantine must-watch of the day.

A RAT virus has mutated and made the jump from animal to human infecting a total of 11 people in Hong Kong.

PLEASE NOTE: This event has been cancelled due to the rapid spread of coronavirus.

As the all-out effort for a vaccine accelerates, USA TODAY is rounding up some of the week's most notable developments.

Indianapolis Prize finalist Christophe Boesch has spent half a century researching chimpanzees and their behaviors.

A profile of the Strasbourg-based body which aims to protect rights and freedoms in Europe

The space agency announces the companies that will work on landers to return astronauts to the Moon.

The game doesn’t celebrate winners but those who persevere and endure.

Three years ago it was barely walking. Now, Atlas, the humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics is performing gymnastic routines that mimic professional athletes.

How do you help millions of passengers navigate one of the world's largest airports? In Turkey, the answer is a fleet of humanoid robots.

The goal, researchers say, was to create a robot that learns the way humans do — through trial and error. Eventually, those robots could be used to complete tasks — in a warehouse or perhaps on the surface of a new planet — with more autonomy.

A British firm claims it has been hired by a mysterious robotics company to find the perfect face for a new fleet of humanoid robots.

The "Megatron" rapper is set to perform in the country next week despite calls to quit the gig over the government's alleged human rights violations.

strataconf: StrataWeek: Wireless body networks bring humans into Internet of Things http://t.co/vRgkRtTTKe Pills & tattoo authenticators & NSA leaks

strataconf: Humans as nodes, pills & electronic tattoo password authenticators & hiding data in temporal cloaks http://t.co/vRgkRtTTKe #strataconf

An arson case is being investigated after a tavern was torched in Hambanathi, Tongaat, outside Durban, following the discovery of human remains in the nearby Wewe River, KwaZulu-Natal police say.

Human remains located in Mulmur Township in March have been confirmed to be those of an 88-year-old Caledon man who was reported missing seven months ago.

Grey Bruce provincial police say the OPP canine unit found human remains in Meaford, and one person is under arrest.

Prominins (proms) are transmembrane glycoproteins conserved throughout the animal kingdom. They are associated with plasma membrane protrusions, such as primary cilia, as well as extracellular vesicles derived thereof. Primary cilia host numerous signaling pathways affected in diseases known as ciliopathies. Human PROM1 (CD133) is detected in both somatic and cancer stem cells and is also expressed in terminally differentiated epithelial and photoreceptor cells. Genetic mutations in the PROM1 gene result in retinal degeneration by impairing the proper formation of the outer segment of photoreceptors, a modified cilium. Here, we investigated the impact of proms on two distinct examples of ciliogenesis. First, we demonstrate that the overexpression of a dominant-negative mutant variant of human PROM1 (i.e. mutation Y819F/Y828F) significantly decreases ciliary length in Madin–Darby canine kidney cells. These results contrast strongly to the previously observed enhancing effect of WT PROM1 on ciliary length. Mechanistically, the mutation impeded the interaction of PROM1 with ADP-ribosylation factor–like protein 13B, a key regulator of ciliary length. Second, we observed that in vivo knockdown of prom3 in zebrafish alters the number and length of monocilia in the Kupffer's vesicle, resulting in molecular and anatomical defects in the left-right asymmetry. These distinct loss-of-function approaches in two biological systems reveal that prom proteins are critical for the integrity and function of cilia. Our data provide new insights into ciliogenesis and might be of particular interest for investigations of the etiologies of ciliopathies.

Mutations in retinaldehyde-binding protein 1 (RLBP1), encoding the visual cycle protein cellular retinaldehyde-binding protein (CRALBP), cause an autosomal recessive form of retinal degeneration. By binding to 11-cis-retinoid, CRALBP augments the isomerase activity of retinoid isomerohydrolase RPE65 (RPE65) and facilitates 11-cis-retinol oxidation to 11-cis-retinal. CRALBP also maintains the 11-cis configuration and protects against unwanted retinaldehyde activity. Studying a sibling pair that is compound heterozygous for mutations in RLBP1/CRALBP, here we expand the phenotype of affected individuals, elucidate a previously unreported phenotype in RLBP1/CRALBP carriers, and demonstrate consistencies between the affected individuals and Rlbp1/Cralbp−/− mice. In the RLBP1/CRALBP-affected individuals, nonrecordable rod-specific electroretinogram traces were recovered after prolonged dark adaptation. In ultrawide-field fundus images, we observed radially arranged puncta typical of RLBP1/CRALBP-associated disease. Spectral domain-optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) revealed hyperreflective aberrations within photoreceptor-associated bands. In short-wavelength fundus autofluorescence (SW-AF) images, speckled hyperautofluorescence and mottling indicated macular involvement. In both the affected individuals and their asymptomatic carrier parents, reduced SW-AF intensities, measured as quantitative fundus autofluorescence (qAF), indicated chronic impairment in 11-cis-retinal availability and provided information on mutation severity. Hypertransmission of the SD-OCT signal into the choroid together with decreased near-infrared autofluorescence (NIR-AF) provided evidence for retinal pigment epithelial cell (RPE) involvement. In Rlbp1/Cralbp−/− mice, reduced 11-cis-retinal levels, qAF and NIR-AF intensities, and photoreceptor loss were consistent with the clinical presentation of the affected siblings. These findings indicate that RLBP1 mutations are associated with progressive disease involving RPE atrophy and photoreceptor cell degeneration. In asymptomatic carriers, qAF disclosed previously undetected visual cycle deficiency.

Assembled α-synuclein in nerve cells and glial cells is the defining pathological feature of neurodegenerative diseases called synucleinopathies. Seeds of α-synuclein can induce the assembly of monomeric protein. Here, we used sucrose gradient centrifugation and transiently transfected HEK 293T cells to identify the species of α-synuclein from the brains of homozygous, symptomatic mice transgenic for human mutant A53T α-synuclein (line M83) that seed aggregation. The most potent fractions contained Sarkosyl-insoluble assemblies enriched in filaments. We also analyzed six cases of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD), one case of familial PD, and six cases of multiple system atrophy (MSA) for their ability to induce α-synuclein aggregation. The MSA samples were more potent than those of idiopathic PD in seeding aggregation. We found that following sucrose gradient centrifugation, the most seed-competent fractions from PD and MSA brains are those that contain Sarkosyl-insoluble α-synuclein. The fractions differed between PD and MSA, consistent with the presence of distinct conformers of assembled α-synuclein in these different samples. We conclude that α-synuclein filaments are the main driving force for amplification and propagation of pathology in synucleinopathies.

N. Leigh Anderson
Apr 1, 2004; 3:311-326
Research

Michal Bassani-Sternberg
Mar 1, 2015; 14:658-673
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Ivan Matic
Jan 1, 2008; 7:132-144
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Lawrence E. Ostrowski
Jun 1, 2002; 1:451-465
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Mathias Uhlén
Dec 1, 2005; 4:1920-1932
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William M. Old
Oct 1, 2005; 4:1487-1502
Research