Cell Biology

Watch Out Why Life Science Reagent Market Thriving Worldwide over the Forecasted Period 2020-2027 | Trends, Scope, Segmentation, Competitors Analysis,…

Life Science Reagent Market is analyzed with industry experts in mind to maximize return on investment by providing clear information needed for informed business decisions. This research will help both established and new entrants to identify and analyze market needs, market size, and competition. It explains the supply and demand situation, the competitive scenario, and the challenges for market growth, market opportunities, and the threats faced by key players.

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Top Key Players Profiled in This Report:

Cell Biology Reagents, Animal Models, Recombinant Proteins

Key Questions Answered in Report:

Online Food Ordering System Market Report provides future growth drivers and the competitive landscape. This will be beneficial for buyers of the market report to gain a clear view of the important growth and subsequent market strategy. The granular information in the market will help monitor future profitability and make important decisions for growth.

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The reports conclusion reveals the overall scope of the Global Online Food Ordering System Market in terms of feasibility of investments in the various segments of the market, along with a descriptive passage that outlines the feasibility of new projects that might succeed in the market in the near future.

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Watch Out Why Life Science Reagent Market Thriving Worldwide over the Forecasted Period 2020-2027 | Trends, Scope, Segmentation, Competitors Analysis,...

Cell Biology

Lab Mice Shed Fat and Build Muscle with Gene Therapy – The Great Courses Daily News

By Jonny Lupsha, News Writer

According to the Fierce Biotech article, the mice who underwent the new gene therapy were injected with a gene that makes the protein follistatin, which in turn blocks a protein called myostatin. Myostatin regulates muscle growth. The therapy caused a significant buildup of muscle mass in the mice while also preventing obesity, the article said. The mice didnt just build muscle; they also nearly doubled their strength without exercising any more than they usually did. Despite being fed a high-fat diet, they had fewer metabolic issues and stronger hearts than did animals that did not receive the follistatin gene.

Scientists have been developing gene therapy for many years. It can change our bodies in many ways, and has potential serving as a treatment for cancer and muscular dystrophy.

The procedure that the mice underwent encapsulates what gene therapy isalthough scientists generally focus on people.

I define [gene therapy] as the addition of genes to humans for medical purposes, said Dr. David Sadava, Adjunct Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at the City of Hope Medical Center.

Dr. Sadava said gene therapy is based on four assumptions. First, whoever is doing the gene therapy has to know the gene thats involved in whichever problem needs to be treated. Second, they must have a normal, healthy copy of that gene available in the lab. Third, they must know where and when the gene is normally expressed. Finally, they have to be fairly certain what will happen when the gene is expressed normally.

Additionally, gene therapy must do several things in order to be considered successful.

First, gene therapy must get the gene into the appropriate cells, Dr. Sadava said. Second, gene therapy must get the gene expressed in those cells. Third, we have to get the gene integrated into the genome of the target cells so itll be there permanently. And fourth, you better not have any bad side effects to gene therapy, like any therapy in medicine.

According to Dr. Sadava, one kind of gene therapy is referred to as gene augmentation, and it comes into play when the functional product of a gene has been lost and no longer gets produced normally. By injecting a gene into someone, healthy copies of a protein product will be made and function restored.

We could hypothetically think of muscular dystrophy as a good target for gene therapy, he said. We know that muscles lack the protein dystrophinits an organizing proteinso well put in the good gene for good dystrophin.

Another kind of gene therapy is called target cell killing. Dr. Sadava said it uses a gene that either produces a poison that kills certain types of cells or it stimulates the immune system to do so. Target cell killing can be applied to cancer.

A gene is put into cancer cells that allows them to produce a protein that will make a toxic drug from a harmless chemical, Dr. Sadava said. So the idea is we inject a harmless chemical into the body, it goes all over the body and when it enters a tumor cell, its converted into a poison by the gene product of the gene that weve put in for gene therapy. So we might put in a gene that will cause a protein to be made that attracts killer T cells so the tumor will stick up its hand and say Come kill me now.'

Gene therapy is an exciting field in science and medicine with a lot of potential for humans. For now, it may seem like its just helping some overweight mice get a confidence boost, but the practical applications should shore up within our lifetime.

Dr. David Sadava contributed to this article. Dr. Sadava is Adjunct Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at the City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, CA, and the Pritzker Family Foundation Professor of Biology, Emeritus, at The Claremont Colleges. Professor Sadava graduated from Carleton University with a B.S. with first-class honors in biology and chemistry. He earned a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego.

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Lab Mice Shed Fat and Build Muscle with Gene Therapy - The Great Courses Daily News

Cell Biology

Nikon Instruments Announces Judging Panel For The 46th Nikon Small World Competition – PRNewswire

Dylan Burnette, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University, Christophe Leterrier, Ph.D., group leader at CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, Samantha Clarke, Photo Editor at National Geographic, Sean Greene, Data and Science journalist at The Los Angeles Times, and Ariel Waldman, Antarctic explorer and NASA advisor will make up the 2020 judging panel choosing this year's winning imagery.

For 46 years, Nikon Small World has been recognized as a leading forum to celebrate excellency in microscopy in the form of photos and videos. The competition will honor the top 20 photography and top 5 video winners in addition to awarding Honorable Mentions and Images of Distinction. Winning submissions will be recognized for their exceptional ability to capture visually stunning and scientifically significant moments under the microscope. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Nikon Small World in Motion, this year's top prize winners of both the video and photo competitions will receive a trip to Japan for themselves and a loved one in addition to the yearly cash prize.

From its beginning, Nikon Small World has aimed to share science, the unseen world, and artistic accomplishments in a vast range of scientific and artistic disciplines with the public at large. Recent past winners have ranged from a turtle embryo to flowers, to frozen water, amino acids, and espresso beans.

The meticulously selected expert judging panel are instrumental in selecting the images and videos that best blend science and artistry. Meet this year's panel:

"Nikon Small World strives to educate, entertain, and share stunning visuals and scientific discoveries with the world at large," said Eric Flem, Communications Manager at Nikon Instruments. "While this year is no doubt different because we are judging remotely, we're excited to come together with an impressive panel of judges whose expertise in art, science, and visualizations will guide us in picking the best microscopy the science community has to offer."

The Nikon Small World in Motion video winners and the winners of the Small World photomicrography competition will be released in the Fall.

For additional information, please visit http://www.nikonsmallworld.com. To get an inside look at the judging process and experience, follow the hashtag #NikonSmallWorld and conversation on Facebook, Twitter (@NikonSmallWorld) and Instagram (@nikoninstruments).

About Nikon Small World Photomicrography CompetitionThe Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition is open to anyone with an interest in photography or video. Participants may get details and upload digital images and videos directly at http://www.nikonsmallworld.com. For additional information, contact Nikon Small World, Nikon Instruments Inc., 1300 Walt Whitman Road, Melville, NY 11747, USA, or email us at [emailprotected]

About Nikon Instruments Inc. Nikon Instruments Inc. is the US microscopy arm of Nikon Healthcare, a world leader in the development and manufacture of optical and digital imaging technology for biomedical applications. For more information, visit https://www.microscope.healthcare.nikon.com/ or contact us at 1-800-52-NIKON.

SOURCE Nikon Instruments Inc.

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Nikon Instruments Announces Judging Panel For The 46th Nikon Small World Competition - PRNewswire

Cell Biology

New analytic tool designed to help guide precision oncology discovery and treatments – Newswise

Newswise ANN ARBOR, Michigan Recent large-scale efforts to categorize the molecular data of multiple cancer types has yielded so much information that researchers now have a new question: How to turn all this data into meaningful information that guides cancer research and patient care.

A new analytic tool developed by University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center researchers combines multiple data sets to help sift the signal from the noise.

Our idea was to combine three sources of data sets molecular data from both cancer cell lines and patients and drug profiling data to understand proper preclinical models that are most representative of these tumors, says Veerabhadran Baladandayuthapani, Ph.D., professor of biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and senior author of a paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Clinical Cancer Informatics that describes this new tool.

The tool, called TransPRECISE, uses data from 7,714 patient samples across 31 cancer types, collected as part of the Cancer Proteome Atlas. This is combined with 640 cancer cell lines from the MD Anderson Cell Lines Project and drug sensitivity data representing 481 drugs from the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer model system.

The good thing is this is a very dynamic process. We can have this whole system set up in a computer. As new patients come in or new data comes in, you can keep adding it, says Rupam Bhattacharrya, M.Stat., a doctoral student and first author on the paper.

The tool builds on an earlier model the team had created, which they called PRECISE. With an eye toward precision medicine, they created a model to look at what changes occur to the molecular structure of individual patients individual tumors. TransPRECISE adds in data from cell lines and drug sensitivity, which will be helpful for researchers translating cancer cell biology into drug discovery.

Now that we have tens of thousands of tumors on these patients we can evaluate what might be the potential therapeutic efficiency of these drugs. The key idea was to develop an analytic tool to do that, says Baladandayuthapani, who is also director of the Rogel Cancer Centers cancer data science shared resource.

In the JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics paper, researchers validated the tool by comparing known drug responses and clinical outcomes in patient data. TransPRECISE identified the differences in proteins among individual tumors and accurately tied it back to actual patient outcomes. In addition, they looked at several pathways to predict potential drug targets. This yielded results that mirrored current treatment recommendations or targets being tested in clinical trials, such as ibruutinib for BRCA-positive breast cancer, and lapatinib for colon cancer.

We have so much data, how do we drill it down to make it more informative so an oncologist can understand? Our work would potentially help oncologists or researchers develop concrete hypotheses based on which mechanism is working, potentially bringing to the top drugs that might warrant more evaluation, Baladandayuthapani says.

The researchers have made publicly available a comprehensive database and visualization of the findings at https://bayesrx.shinyapps.io/TransPRECISE.

Additional authors: Min Jin Ha, Qingzhi Liu, Rehan Akbani, Han Liang

Funding: National Institutes of Health grants R21 CA220299-01A1, U54 CA224065, 3P50 CA070907-20S1, R01 CA160736, R01 CA194391, P30 CA46592, R01 CA1745486, U24 CA209851, U01 CA217842, P30 CA016672; Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, National Science Foundation, University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, University of Michigan School of Public Health

Disclosure: None

Reference: Journal of Clinical Oncology Clinical Cancer Informatics, doi:10.1200/CCI.19.00140, published May 6, 2020

Resources:

University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center, http://www.rogelcancercenter.org

Michigan Health Lab, http://www.MichiganHealthLab.org

Michigan Medicine Cancer AnswerLine, 800-865-1125

# # #

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New analytic tool designed to help guide precision oncology discovery and treatments - Newswise

Cell Biology

Distribution of human tumor mutations more similar to that of chimpanzees, gorillas – News-Medical.net

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.May 21 2020

A new study by researchers from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint center of UPF and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), shows that, surprisingly, the distribution of mutations in human tumors is more similar to that of chimpanzees and gorillas than that of humans.

The article, which analyses cancer from the evolutionary point of view, is published today, 19 May, in Nature Communications. It was led by Arcadi Navarro and David Juan and involved the researchers Txema Heredia-Genestar and Toms Marqus-Bonet.

Mutations are changes that occur in DNA. They are not distributed throughout the genome evenly, but some regions accumulate more and others less. Although mutations are common in healthy human cells, cancer cells display a greater number of genetic changes. During the development of cancer, tumors rapidly accumulate a large number of mutations. In previous studies, however, it had been observed that surprisingly tumors accumulate mutations in very different regions of the genome from those normally observed in humans.

Now, thanks to the data from the project PanCancer, a research team from the IBE has compared the regions of the genome that accumulate more and less mutations in tumor processes, in the recent history of the human population, and in the history of other primates. The results of this new study reveal that the distribution of mutations in tumors is more like that in chimpanzees and gorillas than in humans.

To date, it was thought that the genetic differences we find when we compare tumors and healthy humans could be caused by the 'abnormal' way tumors have of accumulating mutations. In fact, we know that tumors rapidly accumulate a large number of mutations and that many of their genome repair mechanisms do not work well. But now, we have discovered that many of these genetic differences have to do with our evolutionary history".

Txema Heredia-Genestar, first author of the study who recently completed his Ph.D. at the IBE

When an individual's genome is sequenced, it is observed to have a small number of new mutations -- some 60-- compared to their parents, those of their parents with respect to their grandparents, and so on with each previous generation. Therefore, in a person, approximately three million mutations can be seen that represent the evolutionary history of the mutations accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years. Of these, a few are recent and most are very old.

However, when tumor mutations are analyzed, what is seen are just the mutations that have taken place during the tumor process, since the analysis does not take into account the information on populational history.

"We have seen that the distribution of mutations in the human genome is skewed because of human evolutionary history", Heredia-Genestar details. The manner in which a tumor accumulates mutations is the same as a human cell has of accumulating mutations. "But, we do not see this in the human genome because we have had such a complicated history that has made our distributions of mutations change, and this has deleted the signals we should have", he adds.

Throughout history, the human population has suffered drastic declines and has even repeatedly been on the verge of extinction. This phenomenon is known as a bottleneck, and it causes humans as a species to have very little diversity and fewer mutations: they are very similar to each other. In fact, chimpanzees are four times more genetically diverse than humans.

Therefore, the global way for a cell to accumulate mutations can be observed in chimpanzees because they have not undergone these population events. The study concludes that to understand how mutations accumulate in human cells, which is important for studying tumors, it is more useful to look at how they accumulate in other primates rather than looking at it in human populations , whose signal was destroyed by population events.

"Cancers, like chimpanzees and gorillas, only show the complete mutation landscape of a normal human cell. It is we humans, with our turbulent distant past, who display a distorted distribution of mutations", adds Arcadi Navarro, ICREA research professor at the IBE, full professor at UPF and co-leader of the study.

The research suggests that the conservation and study of the great apes could be highly relevant to understanding human health. David Juan, co-leader of the study, concludes that "in the particular case of the development of tumors, other primates have proved to be a better model for understanding how tumors develop at genetic level than humans themselves. In the future, our closest relatives could shed light on many other human diseases".

Source:

Journal reference:

Heredia-Genestar, J.M., et al. (2020) Extreme differences between human germline and tumor mutation densities are driven by ancestral human-specific deviations. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16296-4.

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Anatomy

Anatomy of a Book – The New Yorker

In D. W. Youngs lighthearted, lexical short film A Body of Language, a bookdealer shows off one of the antiquarian book worlds favorite prints: a caricature of a bedraggled, elderly bibliophile standing in a muddle of books, as if he has risen from them. His hair is slightly mussed, eyes obscured behind spectacles, and he wears a suit with a pocket square. Titled Anatomy of an Antiquarian Bookseller, the posters provenance makes it something that dealers of rare tomes especially appreciate: only fifty lithographs of the design, by the artist Ronald Searle, were produced, as a commission for the centenary of a Scottish book-trading firm. Searle labelled the portrait with terms drawn from the vernacular of book-dealing that apply equally to the settling and slumping of a body, which, once in fine condition, is now merely fair: dog-eared; mottled calf; joints badly worn; spine cracked.

The obscure and fanciful language of the book worldparticularly the bodily lingois the focus of the above film, and the two dozen or so booksellers interviewed on camera describe with relish their favorite terms. I love the words, one dealer says. The way that they resonate within a kind of closed system is so beautiful, and the way that they relate to humansthe head of the spine, the foot of the spine, the spine. Dentelles, another tells us, as he ever so gently traces a finger down a frilly gilt border, is the name for the golden edging on the inside of a cover; the word is drawn from the French dentelle, which means lace, and which itself comes from the Middle French for little tooth.

It is often fascinating to hear experts discuss their craft, because the demonstration of extreme competence and precision is powerfully appealing: there is a name for every part and every production method, and particularly for every malady. The specialized language is all in the service of diagnosis and correction. When a book has been read too much or loved too roughly, its thumb-soiled (deliciously icky-sounding). If the spine tilts just a bit to the side, its slightly cocked. (A little juvenile, dont you think? one book dealer exclaims.) When paper is browning from age or moisture, its foxed. Some things sound bad but are not so: stab holes might show that a book has been bound from side-stitched installments that were published separately. And that mottled calf from the poster isnt a sign of decayits only the name for a method of using dribbles of acid to make young leather look more interesting. Accordingly, and comfortingly, the language of cures for booky ills is also expansive. The film tells us about wormholes in the binding, showing spines chawed to dust by pests, but it also reassures us about the existence of rembotage: the procedure for swapping covers if you have one volume with marvellous innards but a ragged cover, and another that is gorgeously packaged but drab inside. And a look through the ABC for Book Collectorsthe antiquarians bible, compiled by John Carter and Nicolas Barkerreveals that, while books can be chipped, creased, tired, and disbound, they can also be re-cased, pressed, re-hinged, and guarded. (If only healing the cockled or faded body were so easy.)

If all professions are conspiracies against the laityas one bookseller jokes, quoting George Bernard Shawthen sometimes the rest of us want to be in the congregation, guided by someone who can offer us the language to describe our parts. The professionals, positively glowing with their expertise, reassure us that someone has already seen and recognized the details, and has a word for the state of things and how they are likely to change over time. Whats more, someone has already devised a fix for our troubles. Searles scribbly and just a bit soiled librarian does not need to be a rare survivalan astonishingly well-preserved and scarce piece. His appeal comes from his dictionary of imperfections, and because the cataloguing of exacting terms is its own kind of delight.

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Anatomy of a Book - The New Yorker

Anatomy

The Anatomy Of A Thunderstorm – WTHITV.com

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) -The warm months across the Midwest bring a common sightthunderstorms.

Since we all like to get outside when the temperature gets warmer, we need to know how to spot a thunderstorm.

These are usually formed with big clouds.

At the front of the storm, on the bottom, you may see what we call a shelf cloud.

It sticks out from the bottom of the storm, as one long cloud.

On the front part of the storm at the top is what we call the mammatus.

This looks like a much bigger shelf angling out ahead of the top of the storm.

After a storm passes through, the back side has some specific characteristics as well.

On the bottom is what looks like the shelf cloud, except it is more compact.

This is what we call the wall cloud.

The wall cloud can also be the start of a tornado developing.

On the back side of the storm is called the flanking line.

This is what we see as the storm goes away, and these clouds look more scattered out, and not as full.

Finally the last two parts may be the most important.

This first line is called a spiraling updraft.

This is the warm air that fuels the storm.

Once it makes it to the top of the storm, we get a downdraft.

This is where wind, hail, and rain are formed as they make their way to the ground.

Now something else we usually associate with a thunderstorm is lightning.

So next time Ill be talking about heat lightning, and whether or not its actually real.

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The Anatomy Of A Thunderstorm - WTHITV.com

Anatomy

Samos And The Anatomy Of A Maritime Push-Back – bellingcat – bellingcat

Samos And The Anatomy Of A Maritime Push-Back

Refugees and migrants have all but stopped arriving on Greek islands amid mounting reports of maritime push-backs. In April of 2020, the UN Refugee Agency recorded a single landing with 39 people. During the same period in 2019, there were 1,856 arrivals by sea. The near-complete drop off follows a border standoff between Greece and its neighbour, Turkey, which shifted its stance in late February, saying that it would no longer prevent the estimated four million refugees and migrants it hosts from crossing into the European Union.

Greece has denounced what it calls extortion diplomacy by Turkey and suspended access to asylum during March. But while the asylum system has officially reopened since April 1, arrivals have not resumed certainly not to the levels from the past. The Greek government, conscious that push-backs break international law, has briefed national media that it is pursuing a new dogma of aggressive surveillance without specifying what this strategy entails.

First of all, we must establish what push-backs are.

According to the European Convention of Human Rights:Push-backs are a set of state measures by which refugees and migrants are forced back over a border generally immediately after they crossed it without consideration of their individual circumstances and without any possibility to apply for asylum or to put forward arguments against the measures taken. Push-backs violate among other laws the prohibition of collective expulsions stipulated in the European Convention on Human Rights.

Greece, as well as other EU frontier states such as Croatia, has long been dogged by accusations of push-backs. Respected human rights groups have collected dossiers of witness testimony which typically allege that phones have been confiscated during such operations. However, in the absence of corroborating evidence that these devices might provide, these accusations have largely been ignored.

Maritime push-backs, taking place far from any of the cameras onshore, present an even greater evidential challenge. However, as part of a broader investigation into push-backs conducted jointly with Deutsche Welle, Trouw, and Lighthouse Reports, we have collected evidence to demonstrate how one of these operations worked in practice. The result is the most precisely documented push-back of its kind.

We verified three videos and gathered the accounts of two witnesses who were themselves pushed back, as well as the account of a relative of one of the victims. We confirmed that the people we see across three separate videos, including footage of these refugees on the Greek island of Samos, are the same. We cross-referenced this with local radio broadcasts reporting their arrival and social media posts by islanders who saw them.

April 29, 2020 Aydn, Turkey

On April 29, the Turkish coast guard (TCG) shared a video and pictures of a rescue operation they claimed happened that day. According to the TCG website they had recovered a total of 22 people who were adrift off the coast of Aydn province near the Dip Burnu peninsula.

The video contains three main sections: in one of the scenes we see the inside of the TCG vessel. The captain films the dashboard where we see what time it is (10:16:11 AM UTC, 13:16:11 Greek time) and the coordinates (37.621833, 26.952611). He then shows two Greek vessels and a life raft that is being towed by one of them.

Then it cuts to footage from a different camera closer to the Greek vessels. The Greek ships are the LS146 and the SAR boat 513 from the Hellenic Coast Guard (HCG).

After another cut we see one more ship, this is the LS050 also from the HCG. The orange vessel, marked 513, appears to be pulling a black-orange life raft behind it.

In the remainder of the video we see how the TCG recovers people from the raft and checks their temperature while they are boarding. The faces of the people being rescued are clearly discernible and their clothes are also distinguishable.

The video itself is suggestive of a push-back, but how do we go from here to proving what actually happened? For that, we had to closely examine the events leading up to the video, beginning the day before.

A Well-Documented Arrival

April 28 was a significant day on Samos, one of the five eastern Aegean islands that has been used by the European Union since 2016 as a kind of buffer zone to contain newly-arrived asylum seekers.

It was the day of the visit by Greeces Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis, the politician who has spoken publicly about taking a harder line on asylum and migration. The ministers arrival coincided with reports on Samos itself of a new landing by refugees and migrants.

On Wednesday, April 29, at 02:17:35 UTC, a video was posted on Facebook showing migrants arriving on an island. The post came from the Consolidated Rescue Group, a Facebook page which regularly publishes video evidence showing apparent endangerment of refugees or migrants by both the Turkish and the Greek coast guard.

The person filming says the date is April 28. The footage consists of two videos that have been stitched together. The first video shows a group of people at sea on a dinghy heading for an island. The second video shows them on a steep hill next to a small cove. We were able to identify the island, to approximate the position of the dinghy, and to geolocate the hill-side vantage.

The first segment was shot at sea, just north of Samos on its westernmost side. We know this because of the mountain range in the background.

When compared to the 3D model from Google Earth it was consistent with the horizon of Samos.

Top: panoramic still from video. Bottom: the island of Samos from the north-west

In the other video segment, we see a cove when the person filming turns their phone toward the sea. Given what we know about their approximate position approaching Samos, there are only two coves that could match the one seen in the video.

Panorama of video taken by asylum seekers

Under the Facebook video, some users left comments saying that they had relatives and friends who were aboard the boat and asking if anyone knew what happened to them. We contacted these people. One individual shared a WhatsApp location sent by a member of the group on arrival. It was shared 07:51 Greek time and the location corresponds with that of the western cove.

We were sent an additional image by one of the asylum seekers who were part of this group, which confirmed they landed at the western cove, at 37.763515, 26.602741.

Left: image sent to us by a member of the group who landed on Samos. Right: Satellite imagery (courtesy of Google Earth/Maxar Technologies)

The next step was to establish what time the group arrived on Samos. We know it was in the morning, because of the time that the WhatsApp location was shared. During individual interviews with migrants who were part of this group, all put the time of arrival at around 7:30 that morning.

We do not need to rely solely on their testimony. In the video, we see the sun is about to rise from the northeast when the group is still on the dinghy, near Samos. The time of sunrise on Samos that day was 06:18. This time is consistent with the people reaching Samos itself at about 07:30 local time.

First light is clearly visible as the asylum seekers approach Samos

The cove we see in the video is located at a distance of only about 800 meters from the village of Drakei, but the climb from the cove to the village is extremely steep and may have taken considerably longer than the distance would suggest.

Mentions Of Migrants On Radio And Social Media: 28th of April, 2020

The first recorded mention of the new arrivals comes on local radio 2000 FM, when a local woman from the village of Drakei, who owns a shop next to a church, told the host, Giannis Negris, that she saw roughly 17 people passing through the village. At noon, the host received a call from a man who told him that two police vehicles were on their way to Drakei. Negris decided to call the hospital to see if the migrants were checked there, but the hospital told him that no migrants had been admitted that day.

Posts made by locals on social media also discussed the issue. In the post below an eyewitness claims they saw this group being apprehended by the authorities when they arrived at the village.

Posts made on Facebook by locals. Left: Original Greek, Right: English translation

The social media post of the incident claims the group was picked up by the port police. According to one of the asylum seekers from this group, who later spoke to us, they were taken to the shore and loaded onto a vessel they remember as being orange. They were taken to and put aboard a second vessel, before eventually being forced onto an orange-black life-raft whose description matches the one we see in the Turkish footage of April 29.

At 7:30 PM, a couple told Giannis Negris they were driving near Mikalis when police stopped them and demanded to see their codes (permission to go out during the Covid-19 lockdown in force on the island during this period). The police then asked them to leave the area due to an unspecified exercise by security forces. The couple left the location, but not before one of them was able to spot a Hellenic coast guard vessel pulling a life-raft. One of the asylum seekers stated that their group were towed out to sea on the same day they landed and left adrift in Turkish territorial waters. People aboard the life-raft could see Turkish coast guard vessels nearby but these boats did not intervene. The asylum seekers said that the tide kept pushing them back into Greek territorial waters. Each time this happened the Greek vessel would use its wake to push the life-raft back into Turkish waters. This push and pull continued overnight and into the afternoon of the next day (April 29), when the Turkish coast guard finally picked them up. Confirmation of this last part is seen in the video published by the TCG.

In addition to the video material, we found corroborating evidence from multiple sources giving near identical accounts of incidents, locations and times. In all cases, they state that on that day, a group of migrants arrived near Drakei and that they were detained shortly after.

Matching People

After confirming the location and time, we were then able to match the individuals from the three separate videos and establish that they are indeed the same people in each. This demonstrates that we see the same people arriving on Samos, before later being picked up by the TCG. In all cases below the footage taken by the asylum seekers is on the left, while the footage taken by the TCG is on the right.

A Pattern Of Push-Backs

Our reconstruction of April 28 and 29 is built on a mixture of open source evidence, which includes videos and pictures, as well as testimony from the group of asylum seekers and locals on Samos. We have located this visual evidence in time and space and found that it corroborates the accompanying witness accounts we were able to collect.

What is potentially unique here, in relation to reported push-backs, is the chain of evidence. In other instances, there is either no footage of migrants being pulled back into Turkish territorial waters by the Greeks, or there is no open source evidence that confirms absolutely that asylum seekers actually made it onto a Greek island.

A good example of these partially evidenced cases came on April 30 on Chios, another Greek island in eastern Aegean, where migrants allegedly arrived on the island before being pushed back. In this case the migrants ended up on an uninhabited islet called Boaz Adasi inside Turkish territory, where they were later picked up by the TCG. There is footage of the people being taken off that islet and there is footage of a dinghy presumed to have been used by the same group on the shore of Chios.

TCG rescuing migrants from the Boaz islet near eme, Turkey

As was the case on Samos, local witnesses discussed seeing the group on social media. This was also picked up by local news sites, that claimed there were newly arrived migrants on Chios, although some of these posts were later removed. So far, however, no images have emerged that show the same individuals on land on Chios.

Dinghy used by migrants who allegedly arrived in Chios on April 30, 2020.

A pack of diapers that was presumably left behind by migrants. This brand of diapers, Super Rest Baby, is sold in Turkey

The Chios example is important because the depth of local testimony would normally be taken as proof of the incident in the absence of photographic evidence. A common complaint among victims of push-backs is that their phones are confiscated when they are taken into custody and prior to being coerced back across the border. In the Samos case, the visual evidence chain remained unbroken, because the video and locations were shared prior to the group being detained.

In the Samos case we were able to establish contact with two asylum seekers who were part of the group pushed back, as well as the husband of one of the women in the videos. They all confirmed the group made it onto the island, and that the members were detained and almost immediately pushed back.

The people we spoke to were also frustrated with Turkish authorities who left them adrift through the night of April 28 and into the following afternoon before taking action. Relatives of the group were left uncertain of their fate because the individuals we see rescued on April 29 were later transferred to a detention center in Aydn, Turkey, where they were quarantined for 14 days without access to a phone before being released.This was a joint investigation conducted by Youri Van Der Weide and Bashar Deeb

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Samos And The Anatomy Of A Maritime Push-Back - bellingcat - bellingcat

Anatomy

Studio E: Anatomy of the death of a practice – Building Design

Studio E has been wound up owing 144,014 to its remaining four staff and other creditors. Documents filed with Companies House show it has just15,688 to its name.

Yet just 12 years ago it employed 45 staff and had assets of 168,048.

Here we chart the history of a once-celebrated practice which won a Queens Award for Enterprise exactly 10 years ago. It had been under enormous pressure in recent years, even before its staff were called to give evidence to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry about its part in the tragedy that claimed 72 lives. One staffer has yet to complete his testimony after being taken unwell twice during Marchs sessions.

In January it emerged that the practice could not afford legal representation at the inquiry.

And its Companies House history shows it has moved offices four times since 2014 and twice this year. Its creditors include its landlord to whom it owes 10,000 in rent.

The award-winning practice has been through a number of guises since it was founded as Studio E Architects Ltd in 1994 by former RMJM staffer and impresario David Lloyd Jones with Cezary Bednarski and Andrzej Kuszell.

A parallel company, Studio E LLP, was set up in 2007 but only started trading in 2011. It was part of an on-off plan to give more control to the younger directors, according to evidence given by Kuszell to the Grenfell Inquiry in March.

The LLP gradually took over all the original firms work. At its peak in June 2008 it employed 45 staff and its net assets were 168,048.

But after running into financial difficulties the LLP went into voluntary creditors liquidation in July 2014, two years after it had been appointed in controversial circumstances to carry out the 9.4m Grenfell Tower refurbishment.

The original firm, Studio E Architects Ltd (SEAL), which had never been closed, took over again. But the practice shrank significantly and by March 31, 2017 it employed 12 staff and had net assets of 48,803.

Current and past members of staff spent two weeks in March giving evidence to the Grenfell Inquiry about the refurbishment and cladding of the tower which contributed to the deadly spread of fire in June 2017, resulting in 72 deaths.

When the inquiry opened in January its barrister Prashant Popat said Studio E could not afford full legal representation and that his 30-minute opening remarks would the only time the firm had legal representation at the hearings.

He said the architect had had to make difficult decisions about how to engage with the process because it did not have the resources to hire a full team of lawyers or even study all of the inquiry documents. That was also the reason it did not appear at the phase one hearings.

It is just a necessary consequence of the financial limitations placed upon the company, Popat said at Januarys session. The truth is that due to the funding restrictions, Studio E has not been able to consider with its advisors all evidence disclosed by the inquiry, or by the other participants.

In its heyday Studio E designed Grange Park Opera House in Sussex and a number of celebrated schools including City of London Academy in Southwark which won a Prime Ministers Better Public Building Award in 2006. In 2008 it was named best school architect in the British Council for School Environments awards.

In 2010 it became only the fourth architecture practice to receive a Queens Award for Enterprise, awarded for its continuous achievement in sustainable development.

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Studio E: Anatomy of the death of a practice - Building Design