A large percentage of rubies and sapphires undergo some degree of heat treatment to enhance their color and, as a result, to increase their value. As the majority of “processors” certify their gems as “heat treated”, this practice is accepted by the trade. Established treatment methods involve super-heating the gems to near melting point, around 2000 °C, and diffusing them with hydrogen. Dealer...

Insects are the largest group of animals in world—there over a million species insects, and they live just about everywhere! provide essential services for us ecosystems, such as pollination, nutrient recycling, pest control. Yet, most pay little attention to insects. Worryingly, insects also face many threats and, across globe, their populations at risk. Understanding importance is vital prote...

Genetic engineering now makes possible the insertion of DNA from many organisms into other prokaryotic, eukaryotic and viral hosts. This technology has been used to construct a variety of such genetically engineered microorganisms (GEMs). The possibility of accidental or deliberate release of GEMs into the natural environment has recently raised much public concern. The prospect of deliberate r...

Mathematical models of disease progression predict disease outcomes and are useful epidemiological tools for planners and evaluators of health interventions. The 𝖱 package gems is a tool that simulates disease progression in patients and predicts the effect of different interventions on patient outcome. Disease progression is represented by a series of events (e.g., diagnosis, treatment and dea...

BACKGROUND Typical enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (tEPEC) strains were associated with mortality in the Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS). Genetic differences in tEPEC strains could underlie some of the variability in clinical outcome. METHODS We produced draft genome sequences of all available tEPEC strains from GEMS lethal infections (LIs) and of closely matched EPEC strains from G...

Mutations in the RNA binding protein FUS cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal adult motor neuron disease. Decreased expression of SMN causes the fatal childhood motor neuron disorder spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The SMN complex localizes in both the cytoplasm and nuclear Gems, and loss of Gems is a cellular hallmark of fibroblasts in patients with SMA. Here, we report that FUS a...

Mouse models of human cancer are valuable tools for cancer research. Although xenografts and genetically engineered models (GEMs) possess limitations as well as advantages, each system plays a significant role in preclinical testing. Tumor xenografts are easy to use, relatively inexpensive, and reproducible. The main drawback of xenografts is that the genetics and histology of the tumors are fr...