Publications by authors named "Zoe Lewis"

The lack of recovery of Chinook salmon () in the Pacific Northwest has been blamed in part on predation by pinnipeds, particularly the harbor seal (). Previous work at a limited number of locations has shown that male seal diet contains more salmon than that of female seals and that sex ratios at haul-out sites differ spatiotemporally. This intrapopulation variation in predation may result in greater effects on salmon than suggested by models assuming equal spatial distribution and diet proportion.

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Article Synopsis
  • The Comet Interceptor mission aims to explore a long-period comet or an interstellar object entering our Solar System, with a focus on its surface composition, shape, and the composition of its gas and dust.
  • Proposed to the European Space Agency in 2018 and approved in June 2022, it is set to launch in 2029 alongside the Ariel mission, utilizing a low-cost approach that allows it to wait for a suitable target comet.
  • The mission will feature a main probe and two sub-probes (B1 from JAXA and B2), providing simultaneous, detailed 3D information about the comet and its interaction with the solar wind, making it unique compared to previous missions.
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The lateral habenula (LHb) is a small, bilateral, epithalamic nucleus which processes aversive information. While primarily glutamatergic, LHb neurons express genes coding for many neuropeptides, such as Adcyap1 the gene encoding pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP), which itself has been associated with anxiety and stress disorders. Using Cre-dependent viral vectors, we targeted and characterized these neurons based on their anatomical projections and found that they projected to both the raphe and rostromedial tegmentum but only weakly to ventral tegmental area.

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Rationale: Low-molecular-weight amines are encountered in pharmaceutical analysis, e.g. as reactants in chemical syntheses, but are challenging to analyse using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (UHPLC/MS) due to their high polarity causing poor retention.

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While temperatures in the noxious range are well-known to inhibit acute itch, the impact of temperature in the innocuous temperature range is less well understood. We investigated the effect of alternating short-term temperature changes in the innocuous range on histamine and cowhage-induced acute itch, taking into account individual differences in baseline skin temperature and sensory thresholds. Results indicate that cooling the skin to the cold threshold causes a temporary increase in the intensity of histamine-induced itch, in line with previous findings.

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Conflict resolution in genomic variant interpretation is a critical step toward improving patient care. Evaluating interpretation discrepancies in copy number variants (CNVs) typically involves assessing overlapping genomic content with focus on genes/regions that may be subject to dosage sensitivity (haploinsufficiency (HI) and/or triplosensitivity (TS)). CNVs containing dosage sensitive genes/regions are generally interpreted as "likely pathogenic" (LP) or "pathogenic" (P), and CNVs involving the same known dosage sensitive gene(s) should receive the same clinical interpretation.

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Pancreatic cancer is the fourth most common cancer in both men and women in the United States. It has the lowest survival rate of all cancers, largely due to the presence of non-specific symptoms, leading to diagnosis at advanced stages. While the majority of cases of pancreatic cancer are sporadic, up to 10% may be associated with an inherited predisposition.

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