Thursday Things is here! This week we have bananas, moons of Saturn, and cancer-fighting mutant wolves.
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Bananas to go! Photo by Lotte Löhr on Unsplash
Yes, we have more bananas!
If you love bananas — which I do! — and you love supply chains (er … yes?), then this item is for you!
What bananas can tell us about supply chains
In his new book, “The Magic Conveyor Belt: Supply Chains, AI, and the Future of Work,” Sheffi, the director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, takes a closer look at supply chains, how they operate, and how new technology might change them.
I can’t contain my excitement!
As Sheffi writes in the following excerpt, even the most basic of products — bananas — go through quite a journey to appear, as if from “supply chain Santa Claus and his elves,” on grocery store shelves.
I knew it! There was no way Santa was keeping those elves idle eleven months out of the year. They’re in the banana business! And it makes sense. Once all the Christmas deliveries are done, it’s time to leave the North Pole behind and head for the tropics.
Bananas are the most frequently purchased grocery item in the U.S. They are also popular in the rest of the world: In 2019, banana growers exported more than 21 million tons of bananas worldwide. Tracing the supply chain of bananas seems to be relatively straightforward because the product has only a single “part,” does not require assembly, and comes with its own “packaging.”
As it turns out, bananas at the supermarket are not quite the natural, simple product they seem to be, but rather a manufactured one due to the various production processes, applied chemicals, and transportation involved. A look at the banana supply chain from a Chiquita plantation in Costa Rica to a Shaw’s supermarket shelf in Boston, Massachusetts, illustrates this well.
Read the article for the rest of the excerpt and to trace the fascinating journey of a bunch of bananas from a tree somewhere in Central America to your grocer’s produce section.
Rings of Saturn
In case you missed, it there are some spectacular images of Saturn’s moons and rings taken by the Cassini probe from 2004 to 2017. Old news, yes, but I haven’t seen them all. This article features several stunning images of Saturn and its satellites that I had not seen before. I also learned that Saturn has at least 156 moons!
Amazing New Photos of Saturn's Moons Have to Be Seen to Be Believed
Check the article for several other striking images of the Saturnian moons, or explore NASA’s full Cassini image archive for yourself!
The rings of Saturn and four of its moons, Pan, Titan, Dione, and Pandora. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
Wolves of Chernobyl
The good news is there are genetic adaptations that make living cells resistant to radiation damage and cancer.
The bad news: you have to go through mutant Chernobyl wolves to get them.
Mutant wolves roaming Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have developed cancer-resilient abilities: study
Mutant wolves that roam the human-free Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have developed cancer-resilient genomes that could be key to helping humans fight the deadly disease, according to a study.
The wild animals have managed to adapt and survive the high levels of radiation that have plagued the area after a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded in 1986, becoming the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Well, I’m glad something good came of the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist in Shane Campbell-Staton’s lab at Princeton University, has been studying how the mutant wolves have evolved to survive their radioactive environment and presented her findings at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, Washington, last month.
Better you than me, Cara. One, because I’m a writer, not an evolutionary biologist and ecotoxicologist. And, two — mutant Chernobyl wolves!
The Chernobyl wolves’ immune systems appeared different than normal wolves’ — similar to those of cancer patients going through radiation treatment, the researchers found.
Love pinpointed specific regions of the wolf genome that seem to be resilient to increased cancer risk, the release states.
The research could be key to examining how gene mutations in humans could increase the odds of surviving cancer — flipping the script on many known gene mutations, like BRCA, that cause cancer.
Read more details here: Mutant Chernobyl wolves evolve anti-cancer abilities 35 years after nuclear disaster “Unlike wolves living exclusively outside the CEZ, Love found that Chernobyl wolves have altered immune systems, similar to cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment. And most promising, she has identified specific regions of the wolf genome that seem resilient to increased cancer risk. Most human research has found mutations increasing cancer risk (like BRCA does with breast cancer), but Love's work hopes to identify protective mutations that increase the odds of surviving cancer.”
And here: Cancer-resistant genes in wolf population at Chernobyl? “The findings of Love and Campbell-Staton about the wolf population may eventually have implications for human health. Campbell-Staton told Barber, “We have started collaborating with cancer biologists and cancer companies to help us to interpret these data and then try to figure out if there are any directly translatable differences that may offer novel therapeutic targets for cancer in humans, for instance.”
This story is interesting for several reasons — First, Nature is resilient. Good on the wolves and other wildlife for surviving and even thriving after humans caused a massive radioactive disasters, as humans do. Second, if these findings lead to new treatments and therapies for cancer, that’s awesome!
Third, I have an idea for a radioactive werewolf story…
Mutant wolf powers, activate! Photo by Thomas Bonometti on Unsplash
Thank you for reading!
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