If there is one thing that the Middle East has an abundance of (besides oil), it would be conflicts. We start our weekly update with a visit to two of these conflict zones: Iraq and Syria.

A recent the survey on the number of people killed in Iraq, the first since 2006, has found that nearly half a million people have died due to the war, though not all deaths are a direct result of violence. Around 40% of those deaths were due to poor healthcare and sanitation, as well as infrastructure failures, which have increased since the US-led invasion of Iraq. Baghdad was the worst hit with violence, but even though the news tend to report most about explosive cars and suicide bombs, gunshots were responsible for 63% of the war-related violent deaths – more than three times those killed by bombs and explosives actually.

In neighbouring Syria, the ongoing civil war is creating a healthcare crisis across the country. Many doctors have fled in fear for their lives, leaving inexperienced doctors – and often veterinarians – to handle the influx of injured people due to the fighting. Experienced doctors outside the country are trying to ease these doctors into these daunting situations using modern technology to help them. Webcams and Skype are being set up in operation rooms to allow doctors thousands of kilometres away to guide local doctors on tricky operations. They are also offering video tutorials to teach them about other conditions they are likely to meet as they try to fill the healthcare void in their country.

On a non-conflict related threat (but still a very real one), researchers found that the increasing aridity of global drylands due to climate change may alter the nutrients cycle in the soil, leading to a decrease in carbon and nitrogen but an increase in inorganic phosphorous in the soil. This could negatively affect the people who depend on drylands for living, since it could lead to a decrease in the plant productivity. It will also decrease the capacity of these ecosystems to act as CO2 sinks and capture the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

Beyond the hood

The Kepler telescope has found an interesting new exoplanet, reported in yesterday’s Nature. It has a similar size to Earth, a similar density to Earth and probably has a similar core to Earth. But that’s where the similarities end. The exoplanet which is dubbed Kepler-78b, is a lava planet, with temperatures on the surface usually reaching 2000-2800°C. It’s year is only 8.5 hours long, orbiting its star about 100 times closer than our planet orbits the Sun.

In fact, it is so close to its star that scientists are confused it could form where it did. While it may not the habitable planet we are all waiting for, it’s an important step in the search for Earth-like planets, now that scientists can measure planets this small.

On a more earthly note, two new treatments for Hepatitis C are nearing approval, with scientists saying these can make a cure for the viral epidemic, for the first time, a real option. This is the first HCV treatment since interfeuron came into use, and and when taken with ribavirin, eliminates hepatitis C in around 80% of people. The main hurdle for these drugs would be the cost, since most of the people who carry the hepatitis C virus worldwide may not be able to afford the treatment. However, for countries such as Egypt where nearly one in every five carries the virus, the new treatment may be the most important break the healthcare system ever got to fight the spread of the epidemic.

Cancer – this is our focus this week. In a special report (the first of several) at Nature Middle East, this week we are putting cancer in the Arab World under the spotlight. Our editorial will set you off on where the problem lies: we have a serious problem, but there’s little we actually know about it. Doctors are basically stumbling in the dark trying to fend off an unseen enemy. For example, some researchers suspect that Arab women may be getting a more aggressive form of breast cancer than their Western counterparts. But without proper registries in Arab states, we cannot really be sure. Genetic studies are already showing links between cancer and common diseases in the region, such as diabetes.

That’s why several states are taking a more research-focused look at the region now. Some countries, such as Egypt, have started setting up registries to monitor cases. The disease burden varies across the region too, as well as how the states deal with it. Gulf states have been more successful than most states in the region with monitoring, where nearly everyone gets screened. Other states, mostly those in Northern Africa, have poorly managed to the disease, which has led to fast growth that the healthcare systems are unable to deal with.

On a different note, researchers studying the fossils of ancient insects that lived hundreds of millions of years ago found that they show an unexpected level of diversity. In the past, these insects were overlooked due to their tiny sizes, which pit them as miniature versions of their current ancestors. They do offer a unique look at that period of time, however, showing there was already wide diversity of insects some 300 million years ago.

Beyond the hood

You might think that monkey communities are noisy, with all the monkeys calling out at the same time, but seems you would be mistaken. Unlike some humans, other primates may actually be used to taking turns in conversations. Researchers decided to study how marmosets communicate and found that they never repeat the same line. Instead, after one marmoset has finished its call, the other monkey waits roughly five seconds before replying. Like humans, they also reacted to the speed of the call. So when one marmoset increased the speed of its call, the other responded in the same manner.

Finally, for our last piece in the highlight this week we go out to the stars, where NASA has discovered the first “tilted” solar system. our solar system is flat, with all the planets orbiting around the Sun’s equator. But Kepler-56, a star that is roughly some 2,800 light years away is different. It’s two stars rotate around the star at a skewed angle of 45 degrees to the star’s equator. By measuring the velocity of Kepler-56, the researchers found that there was a huge body that pulled the star and shifted the angle of its equator. the planets keep its other in track by their gravitational forces, keeping their orbits co-planar.

This week’s roundup is brought to you by guest blogger and writer Rayna Stamboliyska.

Have you heard of reptiles that had fins that allowed them to swim like fish? Such animals used to exist back in the Late Cretaceous period (that is, 98–66 million years ago). Mosasaurs were discovered back in 1764 and it became clear quite quickly that they were actually marine predators, but the debate still continues on how exactly they swam. A part of the scientific community argues they moved like snakes. Bringing robust analysis and proofs, a recent study demonstrates that Mosasaurs were actually skilled swimmers, achieving swim speed comparable to sharks.

On a different and more to-the-ground note, researchers have identified a better curative approach for acute leukaemia, the blood cancer that claims hundreds of lives every year. A comparison between more than 1,000 samples revealed that a drug treatment gives much better remission results and improves survival rates than total body irradiation.

Saudi Arabia has drawn quite some attention this last week. First because of a rare syndrome that has left physicians confused: why are some babies born with decreased brain size, visual impairment, and kidneys dysfunctions? A first hint was that such symptoms actually appear in closely related parents. Researchers studied the genetic makeup of patients affected by this syndrome, and identified a mutation in the ARNT2 gene, which produces a transcription factor that controls neural differentiation. The mutation resulted in an almost complete absence of the ARNT2 protein, which highlights its crucial role in brain and urinary tract development.

The Kingdom has also been in the spotlight as the annual pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) is to begin on 13 October and the coronavirus MERS continues to threaten the region. Counting the highest number of deaths caused by MERS infection, Saudi Arabia is currently on high alert as at least two million pilgrims are expected to flock to Mecca. Such beefed-up security does not, however, help dwell worries as the Kingdom’s Minister of Public Health continued to deflect questions about what his country is doing to determine the source and transmission patterns of the virus.

Last but not least, Saudi Arabia is aiming at becoming an important player in the international research scene. Dr. Mohammed ibn Ibrahim Al-Suwaiyel, president of the King Abdulaziz City for Science And Technology (KACST), spoke to NatureJobs about his vision of science in the Kingdom and the aspirations Saudi Arabia has when it boils down to developing public policies on science and research.

Saudi Arabia is not the only country in the region to have high hopes about achieving scientific excellence. Qatar has been quite successful attracting renowned institutions. Indeed, a stroke centre supported by a US$2 million grant and in partnership with the Imperial College is to open doors in the coming months in the small Gulf country.

Beyond the hood

This week is an exciting one as Nobel Prizes has been awarded for ground-breaking discoveries in science and medicine. The first one to be awarded was the Nobel Prize in medicine which went to Americans James Rothman and Randy Schekman and German-born researcher Thomas Suedhof for their work on vesicle transport or how key substances are transported within cells. The Nobel Prize in Physics went to Belgian Francois Englert and British Peter W. Higgs for their seminal work on the Higgs boson particle, regularly nicknamed the “God particle”. Lastly, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 went to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel for bringing chemistry to the cyberspace. These researchers’ work indeed took chemistry out of the lab and brought it to the world of computing as they developed computerized methods for the study of complex molecules.

Keeping up this celebration mood is the International Octopus Day. Held on 8 October, the Day also kicks off International Cephalopod Awareness Days that span 9 to 11 October. Other than eight arms, octopuses have a number of specific features and have been around for 300 million years, which makes them ancestors even to impressive T. rex. Such incredible longevity pushes many to consider octopuses as resilient to external pressures. Yet scientists still ignore how many octopuses exist in the oceans while thousands of tons of the eight-armed are being caught every year. Some countries have taken measures to limit cephalopod fishing but the biggest octopus exporters continue unabated. The Awareness Days are thus aimed at drawing back attention to these incredible animals and the threats they face.

Lebanon steals the limelight this week on our science roundup, and with good reason too. Archaeologists excavating a site in the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon looking for an archaeological mound got more than they bargained for when they hit an ancient Phonetician temple built somewhere between the 6th and 6th centuries BCE. The temple, however, had already been excavated and then well-hidden. Some four decades ago, Emir Maurice Chehab , Lebanon’s director of antiques, made the discovery but hid the temple when civil war erupted in the country to protect it.

For some reason, however, no one has ever found any documentation of the temple on his writings, even though Chehab was a prolific writer. All the artefacts inside had been removed and not found since then. The excavators are studying the well-conserved temple now for any clues to the exact time it was built, but without any trace of the artefacts that were hidden it is proving to be tricky.

On a different note, agricultural researchers from the American University in Lebanon are urging farmers to abandon their old habits of heavy ploughing of the soil and switch over to conservation agriculture by adopting a technique “no-tilling farming”.

They found that it yields the same – and sometimes better – results than ploughing the earth, and saves the extra costs associated with it. The only drawback is that conventional seeders do not work with unploughed soil. The farmers need to switch to zero till (ZT) seeders, which are specially designed machines that are able to deliver the seeds and fertilizers deep into the soil with minimum disturbance. These machines are rather expensive, however, and while Syria and Iraq have been able to convert their old seeders into ZT seeders at a fraction of the cost, these have performed poorly in Lebanon’s soil which is rich in clay.

Finally, we have two pieces highlighting interesting research on cancer this week. Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar have found that breast cancer is on the rise among Arab women, and they are getting it on average 10 years earlier than women in the West. The researchers found that a more aggressive form of breast cancer was more widespread in the region compared to other areas in the world.

In the other paper we highlight, scientists from KAUST in Saudi Arabia and from France came up with a new computer model that can detect variations in histones, which are proteins that DNA wraps around, that can cause cancers. The new model can accurately identify these modifications which can silent the production of proteins that suppress tumour formation. This can help designing anticancer drugs that can undo these changes, protecting from one of the epigenetic sources of cancer.

Beyond the hood

Volcanoes have played an important part in the history of Mars, with around 70% of the Red Planet’s crust formed from their activity. But a series of craters that were assumed to be the result of meteorites crashing into the planet may actually be long extinct supervolcanoes that were so huge they could have buried the whole planet in ashes. The craters are found in the Arabia Terra region of northern Mars — an area with many deposits of layered rocks of unknown origins that has not previously been considered a volcanic terrain.

If the researchers are right, these supervolcanoes would have been active during the first billion years of Mars’ life only. They would have played a pivotal role however in the formation of environments in Mars – maybe even ones that could support life.

Finally, how many times have you found yourself wet and drenched, caught in an expected storm and a downpour? Apparently, insects never have that problem. They can detect changes in air pressure before a storm hits, and can change their mating behaviour accordingly. Researchers put pairs of cucurbit beetles in a pressure chamber and dropped air pressure, which mimics what happens before rain. If the beetles were already close to each other, they quickly mated, ignoring normal courtship rituals, as if trying to mate quickly before rainfall. When they were further apart, the male beetle did not follow the phermones of the female, possibly since it would be too dangerous to search for a mate when a storm is just around the corner – quite a handy trick too!