The incidence of kidney cancer in the United States rose by an average of 1.2 percent each year between 2011 and 2019 to become the seventh most common cancer. In the meantime, smoking — a well-established risk factor for kidney cancer — has continued to decline.

This led researchers to consider other possible contributing factors, including arsenic, a known cause of various cancers that is naturally occurring in groundwater in Texas and other areas. Unlike previous studies, the Texas A&M study focused on low levels of arsenic exposure (below the regulatory threshold of 10 parts per billion) in both public water systems, which are regulated by various government agencies, and private well systems, which are not regulated.

“Some public water systems are poorly managed and could expose customers to arsenic, but the 40 million people in the United States who rely on private wells are particularly vulnerable,” said Taehyun Roh, with the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

Others involved with the study were Daikwon Han, Xiaohui Xu, and then-doctoral student Nishat Tasnim Hasan, with the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Garett Sansom, with the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. The project was supported by grants from the Houston Methodist Research Institute, Robert and Janice McNair Foundation and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Their findings, published in Environmental Pollution, examined the relationship between kidney cancer rates and arsenic levels in drinking water across 240 Texas counties. The team analyzed cancer data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results on 28,896 cases of cancer among adults in Texas aged 20 and older, alongside water testing data from the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Water Development Board.

They used a statistical model that accounts for geographic location and adjusted the model for demographic and socioeconomic factors and cancer risk factors such as obesity, smoking and diabetes. They also adjusted for covariates that included pesticide density, social vulnerability, income level, rurality, cardiovascular disease hospitalization rates and the prevalence of chronic kidney disease.

The analysis found that exposure to between 1 and 5 parts per billion raised kidney cancer risk by 6 percent, and exposure above 5 parts per billion raised the risk by 22 percent. In addition, the risk of cancer increased by 4 percent with each doubling of water arsenic levels.

“This suggests that even low-level arsenic exposure in drinking water may be associated with an increased risk of kidney cancer, which aligns with previous research indicating an association between this exposure and lung, bladder and skin cancers,” Roh said.

Hasan noted that their study design can indicate associations between factors but not causality and recommended that future studies focus on individual-level and biometric data — rather than the county-level data used here — to better assess the effects of factors such as lifestyle, family history of kidney cancer and other possible sources of arsenic exposure.

“Still, our findings indicate that reducing arsenic exposure could reduce the incidence of kidney cancer, and this could be achieved through efforts such as enhanced regulatory oversight and targeted public health interventions,” Hasan said.

Experts have devised a blueprint to ensure safe, equitable and sustainable global access to clean water. The seven-point strategy will allow water challenges to be governed effectively so they do not create conflict when access is restricted or usage unfairly shared.

Publishing their findings in Nature Water today (29 Nov), the international team of interdisciplinary experts from France, Germany, India, Nigeria, Sweden, the USA, and the UK — led by the University of Birmingham — set out the following seven strategies to help achieve peace and security:

• Collaborate locally on global water challenges to help reduce conflict, empower civil societies, and build resilience. Inadequate water governance can lead to unjust competition and severe impacts on vulnerable communities.

• Involve communities in developing water governance can prevent conflicts during times of scarcity — joint risk assessments, improved public communication, and citizen science help to foster transparency and build trust.

• Consider existing inequalities when developing national and local policies to help prevent conflict and build trust — like successful water cooperation initiatives, such as the EcoPeace project in the Middle East, nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

• Ensure safe water access for women and girls, who often bear the responsibility for water collection. Integrating safety, gender equity, and access into water governance policies is critical in protecting and empowering female citizens.

• Prevent conflict through international treaties and intergovernmental management of transboundary river basins — for example, the Indus Waters Treaty between Pakistan and India, and Peru and Bolivia’s joint governance of Lake Titicaca.

Lead author Professor Stefan Krause, from the University of Birmingham, co-chair of the UNESCO UniTwin network on Ecohydrological Interfaces, commented: “Water can be a powerful tool for peace when managed sustainably and equitably, but there is increasing conflict for water as an irreplaceable resource for humans and waterbodies as highly valuable ecosystems with a rich biodiversity.

“Our study provides a blueprint for using water to foster cooperation and prevent conflicts, ensuring a more just and resilient future for all. Co-creating shared visions for water solutions ensures fairness and acceptance of management decisions.”

The researchers emphasise the importance of initiatives like the UN Water Convention in preventing conflicts and promoting joint water management. They note the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) ‘HELPING’ initiative focuses on local engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovative methods to find solutions for water-related issues.

Co-author Professor David Hannah, Director of the Birmingham Institute for Sustainability and Climate Action (BISCA), and UNESCO Chair in Water Science commented: “The seven recommendations we highlight provide pathways to move from water crisis to sustainable solutions, balancing water as a resource for people and as a valuable ecosystem.

“Considering factors such as community action, indigenous knowledge, open science, and participatory approaches for sustainable water governance will help the world to achieve UN sustainable development goals and leverage water for peace.”

In recent decades, scientists have clearly demonstrated that chimpanzees, like humans, pass on complex cultures such as tool use from generation to generation. But human culture has become vastly more sophisticated, from the Stone Age to the Space Age, as new advances have been incorporated. Chimpanzee cultures haven’t changed in the same way, which suggests that only humans have the remarkable ability to build more sophisticated cultures over time.

Scientists studying chimpanzees in the wild, however, have disputed this, suggesting that some of chimpanzees’ most complex technologies, in which they use multiple tools in sequence to extract hidden food sources, were probably built on previous knowledge over time.

Tracing genetic links

“As most chimpanzee tools, such as sticks and stems, are perishable, there are few records of their history to confirm this hypothesis — unlike human cases such as the evolution of the wheel or computer technology,” says lead author Cassandra Gunasekaram from the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Zurich.

For the new study, a team of anthropologists, primatologists, physicists and geneticists from universities and research institutions in Zurich, St. Andrews, Barcelona, Cambridge, Konstanz and Vienna joined forces to trace genetic links between chimpanzee populations over thousands of years, using new discoveries in genetics to uncover key pieces of chimpanzee cultural history in ways never before imagined.

Early stages of cumulative culture

The authors collected information on markers of genetic similarity — genetic evidence of links between different groups of chimpanzees — as well as a range of foraging behaviors previously reported to be culturally learned, from a total of 35 chimpanzee study sites across Africa. They grouped these behaviors into those that required no tools; those that required simple tools, such as using a leaf sponge to get water from a tree hole; and the most complex behaviors that relied on a toolset.

Trading toolsets across generations

“As an example of such a toolset, chimpanzees in the Congo region first use a strong stick to dig a deep tunnel through hard soil to reach an underground termite nest,” explains Gunasekaram. “Next, they make a ‘fishing’ probe by pulling a long plant stem through their teeth to form a brush-like tip, pressing it into a point and deftly threading it down the tunnel they’ve made. They then pull it out and nibble off any defending termites that have bitten into it.”

“We made the surprising discovery that it is the most complex chimpanzee technologies — the use of entire ‘toolsets’ — that are most strongly linked across now distant populations,” says corresponding author Andrea Migliano, professor of evolutionary anthropology at UZH. “This is exactly what would be predicted if these more advanced technologies were rarely invented and even less likely to be reinvented, and therefore more likely to have been transmitted between groups.”

How female migrations spread innovation

In chimpanzees, it is sexually maturing females, rather than males, who migrate to new communities to avoid inbreeding. In this way, genes are spread between neighboring groups and then further afield over the years, centuries and millennia. The study authors discovered that it would be these same female migrations that could spread any new cultural advances to communities that lacked them.

The study also showed that when both complex toolsets and their simpler versions (i.e., mostly the components of the toolsets) occur at different study sites, the genetic markers indicate that the sites were connected in the past by female migrations. This suggests that the complex versions were built cumulatively by adding to or modifying the simple ones. “These groundbreaking discoveries provide a new way to demonstrate that chimpanzees have a cumulative culture, albeit at an early stage of development,” Migliano adds.

The winter holiday festivities have come and gone. But after the inevitable baking, entertaining, giving, and receiving associated with the season, do you find you have more than a few leftover aluminum pie pans?

The good news, as you may already know, is that aluminum pans are recyclable. But before you toss them in the recycling bin, you might want to see if you can get more use out of them. Here are a few reuse and upcycling ideas — from the practical to the crafty — for those old aluminum pans.

1. Feed the Birds — and Squirrels

Birds, squirrels, and other wildlife tend to have trouble finding food during the chilly winter months. Give back to the friendly critters in your yard by creating a low-cost feeder from an aluminum pie pan.

Simply place the pan on a flat surface outdoors, weigh it down with a rock from the yard and fill it with the birdseed of your choice. Your feathered friends will thank you — perhaps with a chirp or two — if the squirrels don’t eat it all first.

2. Use Pie Pans for Crafts

Aluminum pans are perfect for crafting, especially with young children. Use them as palettes for paints. Or store your beads, glitters, and glues in them while working on a project with the kids.

After craft time, simply wash your pan well with warm water and dry it. Then, you can either save it for future crafts or place it in the recycling bin.

3. Deck the Halls

If you want to get a little rustic with your decorating, take a lesson from the ages. In the past, people crafted holiday ornaments from old cans and scrap tinplate. With a bit of work and creativity, you can craft your own traditional-style ornaments. All you’ll need is aluminum pans and a few basic tools to get the job done.

4. Keep Candles From Making a Mess

Pillar candles tend to drip, and a big mess definitely ruins the ambiance. Save your surfaces by placing an aluminum pie pan under your candles before lighting them.

If you’re concerned that an aluminum pan may clash with your décor, simply cut out the bottom using heavy-duty scissors and toss the sides in the recycling bin. The flat aluminum circle will be less conspicuous but will still protect your tables from dripping wax.

5. Feed Fido On the Go

Since they’re lightweight but fairly sturdy, aluminum pie pans are perfect for on-the-go pet dishes.

Save them with your outdoor gear and use them for food and water bowls on your next camping trip, picnic, or beach excursion.

6. Make Picture Frames

SFGate.com contributor Mary Love suggests using pie pans as alternative picture frames or frames for displaying your child’s art. Simply paint the plate with craft paint, cut a circle from a photo, and glue it into place. Glue a magnet on the back to display the picture on your fridge.

7. Reduce the Mess While Cooking

Networx.com writer Sayward Rebhal suggests using old pie pans as baskets for grilling veggies. To prevent your vegetables from falling into the coals, simply poke a few holes in aluminum pan, fill it with your veggies, and put the whole thing on the grill.

An aluminum pan with small holes is also great for reducing messes while frying foods on the stove. If you’re dealing with a lot of oil spatter, simply place the pie pan over your food in the frying pan to protect yourself and your kitchen from hot cooking oil.

8. Cookout Tools

Try using old aluminum pans to protect your hands when toasting food on a stick over a fire during an outdoor cookout.

Simply punch two holes in opposite sides of a pan. Then slide the stick you’ll use for toasting your marshmallows or hot dogs through the holes. The aluminum will be at one end of the stick and you will spear your food on the other end. The aluminum creates a heat shield for your hand while you hold your food over the fire or coals.

9. Garden Planter

Although this isn’t a reuse idea for pie-sized pans, we thought we’d include it as you may also have some larger aluminum pans you’d like to reuse before you recycle them.

The contributors at ThriftyFun.org suggest using an old aluminum roasting or loaf pan as a planter for the garden. These larger pans can hold multiple seed pots when you’re starting your seedlings in the spring. They’ll hold water, and with their higher edges, the pans can keep your seedlings upright and stable.

Editor’s note: Originally published on November 27, 2013, this article was updated in November 2024.

Now, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital have analyzed the entire mouse intestine, mapping gene expression and cell states and location in the healthy gut and in response to perturbations such as inflammation. They identified tight regulation of cell types and states in different regions of the organ, as well as a unique segment of the colon that is controlled by immune signals. The findings, which appear in Nature, reveal the surprising adaptability and resilience of the intestine to perturbations and highlight the importance of considering how cell processes are regulated and vary across different parts of a tissue or organ.

“The intestine and in particular the colon has been studied for decades but it hasn’t been characterized in this way before, and that both forces us to reevaluate many different studies and opens up a window for future research,” said Toufic Mayassi, a co-first author on the study along with Chenhao Li. Mayassi and Li are postdoctoral researchers in the lab of Ramnik Xavier, who is a core institute member at the Broad, member of the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and senior author of the study.

“This work illustrates that you really have to integrate the spatial relationships governing a given organ into your thinking, and we hope our study provides a platform and framework that helps put both previous and future discoveries in context,” Mayassi said.

Xavier is the director of Broad’s Immunology Program, as well as the Kurt J. Isselbacher Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, director of the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology and member of the Department of Molecular Biology at MGH, and co-director of the Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics at MIT.

“We’ve built a blueprint of the entire gut, and that’s a remarkable achievement,” said Xavier. “We now have a way of studying the whole organ, examining the effect of genetic variants and immune responses associated with diet, the microbiome, and gastrointestinal disease, and designing many other experiments.”

Mapping the intestine

Many previous studies of the gut looked at cells or organ-like assemblies of cells in a dish. While such approaches provide a controlled environment to study the function of specific genetic variants involved in disease, they don’t illustrate how cells from different parts of an intact organ interact to bring about disease.

In 2021, Mayassi, who spent his PhD studying immune responses in the intestine, teamed up with Li, a computational biologist, to build a comprehensive map of gene expression across the entire mouse small intestine and colon using spatial transcriptomics and computational approaches.

To the researchers’ surprise, the spatial composition of the intestine — the relative location of various cell types and the genes they express — remained relatively stable when certain factors changed. It stayed the same in animals with and without gut microbiota and in tissue collected at night or during the day, suggesting that neither the microbiome nor circadian rhythms impacted the spatial landscape.

The intestine also showed signs of resilience. When Mayassi treated the animals with a molecule known to induce inflammation, gene expression and cell spatial distribution changed but showed signs of returning to normal a month later, and had almost entirely recovered by three months. The findings suggest that the gut’s ability to bounce back from changes brought about by inflammation could be critical to intestinal health and function.

“As a computational biologist, it is exciting to be involved in generating and exploring such a unique dataset,” Li said. “It opens the door to developing tools for analyzing spatial data and informs the design of future studies on the small and large intestine.”

Immune control

Though the intestine was stable to many influences, unique niches within the organ were affected by the gut microbiota and showed signs of adaptation. Mice that had a normal microbiome expressed unique genes in a specific region of the colon compared to germ-free mice. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, the authors found that the changes occurred in three structural cell types. In particular, goblet cells — cup-shaped cells that secrete mucus — expressed those genes only in the presence of ILC2s, a kind of immune cell.

Next, the researchers plan to apply their method to study how other factors including sex, diet, food allergies, and genetic risk factors for conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease impact the intestine’s spatial landscape. They also hope to elucidate the extent to which the findings in mice correlate with spatial control in the human gut.