Behind the Paper
The real stories behind the latest research papers, from conception to publication, the highs and the lows
Getting a handle on the evolutionary processes of cancer
The methodologies that we use to study cancer are ever changing. In recent years researchers have aligned pathological evidences alongside classical evolutionary theory and with this comes both opportunities and challenges. Here I discuss a practical challenge that underlies our recent paper "The evolutionary landscape of colorectal tumorigenesis", which was how to acquire and process samples from pre-malignant lesions. I also note a particularly surprising result, which could only have been gleaned through an evolutionary directed analysis on the resulting data.
The threat of political bargaining to climate mitigation in Brazil
“In exchange for political support, the Brazilian government is signaling landholders to increase deforestation, putting the country’s contribution to the Paris Agreement at risk. The President of Brazil has signed provisionary acts and decrees lowering environmental licensing requirements, suspending the ratification of indigenous lands, reducing the size of protected areas and facilitating land grabbers to obtain the deeds of illegally deforested areas2. This could undermine the success of Brazil’s CO2 emission reductions through control of deforestation in the previous decade…”
A Birthday Celebration for RPS Policies
Nevada and Massachusetts, two of the first adopters of modern-day renewable portfolio standards (RPS), just celebrated their policies’ 20th birthdays.
