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The newest issue of Disquisitions on the Past & Present has been published by the Institute of History and Philology. Articles in this issue (Vol. 44) include:

Bilaterally symmetrical animals are those with body structures exhibiting left–right symmetry, including species such as fruit flies, nematodes, and zebrafish. Despite this symmetry, their body plans vary significantly, with around 30 different animal phyla identified. A team led by Assistant Research Fellow Yi-Jyun Luo at the Biodiversity Research Center has analyzed chromosome-level genomes from 15 animal phyla, covering 54 classes. The study used a "rearrangement index" to quantify genome structural changes, finding that most bilaterian genomes have undergone extensive chromosomal rearrangements resulting from events such as fusion, fission, and translocation. In contrast, marine invertebrates such as sea urchins, amphioxus, and scallops exhibit relatively conserved genome structures, with little change over the past 500 million years.

The Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Vol. 127 is now available

Journal of Social Sciences and Philosophy (Vol.37, No.2) has been published

The benefits to one's well-being due to nature contact have been addressed in various disciplines. The well-being benefits of enjoyment of nature elicited by exposure to natural environments, however, has received little research attention. A research team led by Dr. Pei-Shan Liao at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, has explored the relationship between nature contact and subjective well-being (SWB) from a hedonic perspective, focusing on the often-overlooked role of enjoyment in natural settings. Using representative survey data combined with environmental data (e.g., weather and air quality), the study examines how both physical and perceptual (enjoyment-based) contact with nature relate to general happiness and life satisfaction. A two-stage estimation approach reveals that while enjoyment of nature is positively associated with SWB, physical contact with nature is not directly linked to SWB and may even negatively mediate the enjoyment–SWB relationship. The findings suggest that perceptual contact with nature is a more significant contributor to well-being than physical contact alone. The research has been published on May 10, 2025 in Journal of Environmental Psychology. The authors including Dr. Daigee Shaw and Dr. Le-Yu Chen (Institute of Economics), and Dr. Chuan-Yao Lin (Research Center for Environmental Changes).

Researchers at Academia Sinica collaborated with scientists from the Institute of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) of Taiwan and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA, to explore the heat stress and productivity loss of outdoor construction workers in hot and humid urban environments. We assessed the heat stress encountered by 101 workers at 10 construction sites in Taipei metropolitan area and estimated the associated productivity loss. We found that in labor-intensive industries such as construction, heat stress imposes a significant economic burden, with productivity losses ranging from 29% to 41.3% due to physical work capacity reduction resulting from heat stress, depending on the type of task. This means that under high-temperature conditions, workers' productivity can drop by nearly one-third to half. For example, if a worker normally carries 100 bricks per hour, heat stress may reduce their efficiency to 59–71 bricks per hour, causing delays, extending the project timeline, increasing costs, and potentially affecting the company's competitiveness. This is one of the few studies to measure heat stress at a minute-level resolution and estimate productivity losses. It highlights the urgent need for the authorities to take appropriate measures to protect construction workers and minimize economic losses under climate change. The paper was published in Natural Cities. The IOSH, Taiwan, and the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health funded the research.

Neutrophilic asthma remains poorly responsive to current therapies. This study reveals that stem cell factor (SCF) expression in asthma patients positively correlates with neutrophilic airway inflammation. Using mouse models, the team discovered that SCF, primarily secreted by lung fibroblasts, activates group 3 innate lymphoid cells (ILC3s), thereby promoting neutrophilic inflammation.

The notochord is a defining feature of chordates, yet its evolutionary origin remains mysterious. Our group has identified a regulatory syntax that controls the notochordal expression of brachyury, which encodes a transcription factor essential for notochord development. This syntax is composed of binding sites of four transcription factors in a specific arrangement and is deeply conserved in diverse animals and even in a unicellular relative to animals. In chordates, it has been rewired to respond to different upstream signals, facilitating the origin of the notochord. This study reveals that during animal evolution, regulatory elements can be preserved in a specific code and repurposed for novel functions.

The VCP/p97 segregase is a member of the AAA+ ATPase family that participates in numerous cellular processes including extraction of XPC from UV-induced DNA lesions during nucleotide excision repair. In this study, it was shown for the first time that BTG3-mediated CHK1 activation and phosphorylation of VCP/p97 at Ser775 govern the cytoplasm-to-nucleus shuttling of VCP/p97. Loss of BTG3 or CHK1 inhibition led to retention of VCP/p97 in the cytoplasm, thus delaying the extraction of lesion-bound XPC and hampering the repair of UV DNA lesions, which culminate in an increase in mutation and carcinogenesis in vivo. These findings not only reveal the molecular basis of VCP/p97 cytoplasm-to-nucleus shuttling but also highlight a potential role of BTG3 and CHK1 in guarding against UV-induced skin mutation and carcinogenesis.

Analyzing the clinical data from the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative, TPMI Consortium researchers led by IBMS’s Drs. Chun-Yu Wei and Pui-Yan Kwok studied genetic risk factors’ effect on one’s response to commonly used medications. In their paper, the TPMI team found that nearly all 486,956 TPMI participants carried at least one genetic variant that could affect drug response.

In living cells, reactive oxygen species (ROS) play a dual role — they are important molecules that regulate cellular metabolism and signaling, but excessive ROS can lead to oxidative damage and chronic inflammation. For years, it has been widely recognized that oxidative stress is closely associated with immune imbalance, aging, cancer, and metabolic diseases. However, due to the lack of high-resolution tools to dynamically analyze redox signaling, the fundamental question of “how redox signals drive immune cell fate” has remained unresolved.

《Bulletin of the Institute of Mathematics Academia Sinica New Series》 Volume 20 Number 2 is now available