A team of scientists including a Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) research associate announced the discovery of a new species of pale-gold colored frog from the cloud forests of the high Andes in Colombia. Its name, Pristimantis dorado, commemorates both its color (dorado means 'golden' in Spanish) and El Dorado, a mythical city of gold eagerly sought for centuries by Spanish conquistadores in South America.

"The Spaniards assumed Colombia's wealth was its gold, but today we understand that the real riches of the country lie in its biodiversity," said Andrew Crawford, a STRI research associate and faculty member at the Universidad de Los Andes.

Boulder, Colo., USA: The most studied battleground from the American Civil War, from a geological perspective, is the rolling terrain surrounding Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Here, the mixture of harder igneous and softer sedimentary rocks produced famous landform features such as Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top that provided strong defensive positions for the Union Army.

Another even more common type of rock -- carbonates such as limestone -- provided similarly formidable defensive positions at numerous other battlefields in both the eastern and western theaters of conflict.

Thanks to government mandates and ongoing subsidies, wind energy has become more popular, and one impact of large-scale wind energy development has been widespread mortality of bats. A new study tracks down the origin of bats killed by wind turbines in the Appalachian region in hopes of better understanding the risks to affected populations.

Individuals with 2p15p16.1 microdeletion syndrome present with intellectual disability, microcephaly, delayed growth, dysmorphic craniofacial features, and digital abnormalities. The precise genetic region responsible for this syndrome has been challenging to identify. However, recent reports indicate that 4 genes (XPO1, USP34, BCL11A, and REL) are commonly deleted in this syndrome. A study in the current issue of JCI Insight describes 8 new subjects with microdeletions in chromosomal region 2p15p16.1 and provides evidence that loss of XPO1, REL, and BCL11A underlie this syndrome.

Bladder cancer is the fourth most common cancer among men in the United States. While low-grade tumors have a very favorable prognosis, muscle-invasive and metastatic tumors have poorer survival rates. In this month's issue of JCI Insight, William Kim, Benjamin Vincent, and a research team from the University of North Carolina characterized a new subtype of muscle-invasive bladder cancer that shares molecular signatures with some forms of breast cancer. A subset of triple-negative breast cancers express low levels of the tight junction protein claudin. The UNC researchers now document that claudin-low tumors represent a specific subtype of bladder cancer as well.

Antibody-secreting plasma cells arise from B cell precursors and are essential for adaptive immune responses against invading pathogens. Plasma cell dysfunction is associated with autoimmune and neoplastic disorders, including multiple myeloma. Surface markers that are specific to plasma cells have not been identified and antibodies that only recognize these cells have been challenging to generate using conventional systems. In the current issue of JCI Insight, Götz Ehrhardt and colleagues at the University of Toronto describe the generation of a plasma cell-specific antibody from immunized lampreys.