Nature Video !EXCLUSIVE! Download Status
Channing Chambers
Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.
Scientists have been trying to identify every gene in the human genome since the initial draft was published in 2001. In the years since, much progress has been made in identifying protein-coding genes, currently estimated to number fewer than 20,000, with an ever-expanding number of distinct protein-coding isoforms. Here we review the status of the human gene catalogue and the efforts to complete it in recent years. Beside the ongoing annotation of protein-coding genes, their isoforms and pseudogenes, the invention of high-throughput RNA sequencing and other technological breakthroughs have led to a rapid growth in the number of reported non-coding RNA genes. For most of these non-coding RNAs, the functional relevance is currently unclear; we look at recent advances that offer paths forward to identifying their functions and towards eventually completing the human gene catalogue. Finally, we examine the need for a universal annotation standard that includes all medically significant genes and maintains their relationships with different reference genomes for the use of the human gene catalogue in clinical settings.
A taxon is Data Deficient (DD) when there is inadequate information to make a direct, or indirect, assessment of its risk of extinction based on its distribution and/or population status. A taxon in this category may be well studied, and its biology well known, but appropriate data on abundance and/or distribution are lacking.
This paper discusses how the Latin American and Caribbean region is on the verge of a transition from experimenting with nature-based solutions (NBS) to adopting it on a much wider scale that can transform infrastructure planning and investments for the better. NBS can contribute to equitable and sustainable development across this region, and can provide benefits to multiple sectors and societal challenges.
To help chart a pathway forward, this issue brief examines the status of NBS efforts and results in the region to shed light on obstacles to progress and ways to overcome them. It is the first regional review of NBS projects, their status, and implications for investment. The review examines key sectors (i.e., water and sanitation, housing and urban development, energy, and transportation) and investment objectives (improved water quality and supply, flood risk mitigation, and landslide risk and erosion). It presents the current baseline of NBS adoption in Latin America and the Caribbean, drawing on a dataset of 156 projects identified in 2020.
Your education, your job, your income, and the neighborhood you live in are factors considered to represent socioeconomic status (SES) and contribute to a variety of health and social outcomes, from physical and mental health to educational achievement and cognitive capacities.
Are occupational and work conditions associated with work-to-home conflict? If so, do those associations vary by gender? Among a sample of adults in Toronto, Canada, we found that men and women in higher-status occupations reported higher levels of work-to-home conflict than workers in lower-status jobs. In addition, we observed higher levels of work-to-home conflict among workers who are self-employed and among those with more job authority, demands, involvement, and longer hours. The only significant gender-contingent effect was found for nonroutine work, which is associated positively with work-to-home conflict among men but not women. Higher levels of job demands, involvement, and hours among individuals in higher-status occupations significantly contribute to occupation-based differences in work-to-home conflict. Moreover, despite some overlap, these work conditions have largely independent associations with work-to-home conflict. Results generally support the "stress of higher status " hypothesis among both women and men. Although higher-status positions yield many rewards, such positions are not impervious to inter-role stress, and this stress may offset those rewards.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is a membership Union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organisations. By harnessing the experience, resources and reach of its more than 1,400 Member organisations and the input of some 15,000 experts, IUCN is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.
Taking Nature's Pulse confirms that the places where the great majority of British Columbians work and live-the lower elevation river valleys in the south and near the coast-are the very same places where most of the species in the province live. Competition between humans and nature for a small fraction of B.C.'s land base has resulted in our standing as the province with the greatest number of endangered vascular plant and vertebrate species. These areas are also home to two of the four most endangered ecosystems in the country.
The article discusses a U.S. Supreme Court case involving welder Gilbert Sanchez who filed a complaint against his employer, Smart Fabricators of Texas LLC, after he sustained an injury at work, including information on pre-en banc proceedings and the application of seaman status jurisprudence.
Ranking long-distance aerial migrant animals presents unique problems because their non-breeding status (rank) may differ significantly from their breeding status, if any, in Wisconsin. In other words, the conservation needs of these taxa may vary between seasons. To present a less ambiguous picture of a migrant's status, it is necessary to specify whether the rank refers to the taxon's breeding (B) or non-breeding (N) status. (e.g., S2B, S5N).
Very compact objects probe extreme gravitational fields and may be the key to understand outstanding puzzles in fundamental physics. These include the nature of dark matter, the fate of spacetime singularities, or the loss of unitarity in Hawking evaporation. The standard astrophysical description of collapsing objects tells us that massive, dark and compact objects are black holes. Any observation suggesting otherwise would be an indication of beyond-the-standard-model physics. Null results strengthen and quantify the Kerr black hole paradigm. The advent of gravitational-wave astronomy and precise measurements with very long baseline interferometry allow one to finally probe into such foundational issues. We overview the physics of exotic dark compact objects and their observational status, including the observational evidence for black holes with current and future experiments.
The crushing of matter to infinite density by infinite tidal gravitation forces is a phenomenon with which one cannot live comfortably. From a purely philosophical standpoint it is difficult to believe that physical singularities are a fundamental and unavoidable feature of our universe [...] one is inclined to discard or modify that theory rather than accept the suggestion that the singularity actually occurs in nature.
There is, so far, no evidence for objects other than BHs that can explain all observations. Nonetheless, given the special nature of BHs, one must question and quantify their existence. Can BHs, as envisioned in vacuum GR, hold the same surprises that the electron and the hydrogen atom did when they started to be experimentally probed? This overview will dwell on the existence of BHs, and signatures of possible alternatives. There are a number of important reasons to do so, starting from the obvious: we can do it. The landmark detection of gravitational waves (GWs) showed that we are now able to analyze and understand the details of the signal produced when two compact objects merge (Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration) 2016a, b). An increase in sensitivity of current detectors and the advent of next-generation interferometers on ground and in space will open the frontier of precision GW astrophysics. GWs are produced by the coherent motion of the sources as a whole: they are ideal probes of strong gravity, and play the role that EM waves did to test the Rutherford model. In parallel, novel techniques such as radio and deep infrared interferometry (Doeleman et al. 2008; Antoniadis 2013) are now providing direct images of the center of ours and others galaxies, where a dark, massive and compact object is lurking (Genzel et al. 2010; Falcke and Markoff 2013; Johannsen et al. 2016; Abuter et al. (GRAVITY Collaboration) 2018b; Akiyama et al. 2019).
In this context, it is tempting to draw another parallel with particle physics. After the Thomson discovery of the electron in 1897, the zoo of elementary particles remained almost unpopulated for decades: the proton was discovered only in the 1920s, the neutron and the positron only in 1932, few years before the muon (1936). Larger and more sensitive particle accelerators had been instrumental to discover dozens of new species of elementary particles during the second half of the twentieth century, and nowadays the Standard Model of particle physics accounts for hundreds of particles, either elementary or composite. Compared to the timeline of particle physics, the discovery of BHs, neutron stars, and binary thereof is much more recent; it is therefore natural to expect that the latest advance in GW astronomy and very long baseline interferometry can unveil new species in the zoo of astrophysical compact objects. Of course, this requires an understanding of the properties of new families of hypothetical compact objects and of their signatures.
df19127ead