Branched DNA for disease diagnosis and therapy.

DNA exhibits remarkable versatility, which is attributed to its inherent molecular recognition capabilities, programmable sequences, and excellent biocompatibility. Among its various topological forms, branched DNA (bDNA), including Y-shaped DNA (Y-DNA), X-shaped DNA (X-DNA), etc., stands out as a fundamental building block for fabricating functional DNA-based materials and has demonstrated great promise across diverse applications in recent years.

ENLITE PD: A Randomized Clinical Trial of Light Therapy for Impaired Sleep in Parkinson's Disease.

Background: Light therapy (LT) in Parkinson's disease improves sleep. Specific LT parameters require further study, including optimal frequency.

Objectives: We aimed to determine if once- or twice-daily bright white light therapy (BWLT) improves sleep.

Impact of Vision Centres on achieving universal eye health coverage: prevalence, coverage and utilisation of eye care services in Southern India.

Background: The Vision Centre (VC) model evolved to meet primary eye care needs in rural and underprivileged communities, overcoming workforce and resource challenges. Despite over two decades of operation, its impact is not well-documented. We evaluated its effectiveness by comparing prevalence of visual impairment (VI), eyecare utilisation and service coverage among residents within and beyond a 5 km radius of VCs in Theni district, India.

Emotion understanding in infants and young children: How input shapes emotional development.

Here, we will review the developmental literature on how infants and young children learn about emotions. We take a process-based perspective, highlighting how the protracted trajectory of emotional development unfolds concurrently with changes in children's cognitive abilities, and how variability based on context, culture, and experience shape this trajectory over time. We will also emphasize the role of input into this development, a factor that has often been ignored.

Clostridium tyrobutyricum strains exhibit high genetic diversity and differ in their ability to cause late blowing defect in washed-curd cheese.

Clostridium tyrobutyricum is a spore-forming bacterium and is considered to be one of the main causative agents of late blowing defect (LBD) of hard and semi-hard cheeses. However, the spoilage potential of C. tyrobutyricum appears to be strain dependent.

Who's at the table? Disaster committee composition and policy pathways after Hurricane Sandy.

While scholars argue that resident participation in disaster recovery policymaking matters, few research teams have captured the composition of disaster recovery committees after shock. This study examines how the composition of disaster recovery committees influenced recovery plans following Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Analyzing all 47 NY Rising Community Reconstruction Program committees, we catalogued professional and demographic traits of members and conducted quantitative text analysis on their recovery plans.

AI-powered automated model construction for patient-specific CFD simulations of aortic flows.

Image-based modeling is essential for understanding cardiovascular hemodynamics and advancing the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Constructing patient-specific vascular models remains labor-intensive, error-prone, and time-consuming, limiting their clinical applications. This study introduces a deep-learning framework that automates the creation of simulation-ready vascular models from medical images.

Working across religions, cultures, settings, and development: Protocol for wave 2 data collection with children and parents by the developing belief network.

The Developing Belief Network is a global research collaborative studying religious development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the intersection of cognitive mechanisms and cultural beliefs and practices in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network's second wave of data collection, which aims to further explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior using a multi-time point approach. This protocol is designed to investigate three key research questions-how children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents, how children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity, and how religious and supernatural beliefs are transmitted within and between generations-via a set of eight tasks for children between the ages of 5 and 13 years and a survey completed by their parents/caregivers.

Inverse Relationship Between Halophilic Growth and Cell Integrity Under Extremely Chaotropic Conditions.

Concentrated magnesium chloride brines are extreme environments that are inhospitable to life on Earth. The ionic strength of these brines significantly depresses water activity and concomitantly exerts significant chaotropic stress. Although these brines are largely considered sterile, the well-known preservative effects of magnesium chloride on certain biomolecules, such as DNA, confound life detection approaches and efforts to constrain precisely the habitable window of life on Earth.

Preclinical evidence on the impact of sorghum () genotypes, fractions, and processing methods on intestinal health: a review of an ancient grain rich in phenolic and dietary fiber.

Sorghum () is an ancient grain and the fifth most produced cereal worldwide, and the most consumed cereal in the semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia, being a key grain for the diet of about 500 million people. It is rich in phenolic compounds (like flavonoids, 3-deoxyanthocyanidins, phenolic acids), resistant starch, and dietary fiber, which may beneficially influence intestinal health. This systematic review analyzed 22 studies to assess the effects of sorghum processing on bioactive compounds and their effects on intestinal health.

Tomato Roots Exhibit Development-Specific Responses to Bacterial-Derived Peptides.

To combat soilborne pathogens, roots activate pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) through pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs) that recognise microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs). Root PTI pathways can differ from their above-ground counterparts and have been well-characterised in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana but are not well-defined in crops. Gene repurposing coupled with differences in root tissues and root architecture in tomato species (Solanum lycopersicum and S.

Associations between prepartum urine pH and periparturient blood calcium concentrations in multiparous Holstein cows.

Introduction: Metabolic alkalosis induced by prepartum diet cations impairs Ca homeostasis in the periparturient cow. Adding anions to prepartum diets reduces blood pH improving periparturient Ca homeostasis. Urine pH generally reflects blood pH and is practical to measure on farm.

Deconvoluting and Interpreting Nontargeted Chemical Data: A Data-Driven Forensic Workflow for Identifying the Most Prominent Chemical Sources in Receiving Waters.

Chemical forensics aims to identify major contamination sources, but existing workflows often rely on predefined targets and known sources, introducing bias. Here, we present a data-driven workflow that reduces this bias by applying an unsupervised machine learning technique. We applied both nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) on the same nontargeted chemical data set to compare their different interpretations of environmental sources.

Photoaffinity Labeling Reveals a Role for the Unusual Triply Acylated Phospholipid -Acylphosphatidylethanolamine in Lactate Homeostasis.

Most eukaryotic membranes comprise phospholipids bearing two hydrophobic tails, but -acylphosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE) stands out as a long-known but poorly understood phospholipid with three hydrophobic groups. What little attention NAPE has received has been devoted to understanding its metabolic functions as a precursor to -acylethanolamine (NAE), a bioactive lipid that acts as an endocannabinoid. Yet, levels of NAPE increase during myocardial infarction and ischemia, suggesting potential signaling roles for this lipid.

Novel Perineural Pathways and The Dynamics of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Macrophage Trafficking Out of the Central Nervous System.

A challenge to eradicate HIV is the CNS reservoir and unknown mechanisms-pathways by which infected macrophages can exit. We used intracisternal (i.c.

Ecology and sexual conflict drive the macroevolutionary dynamics of female-limited color polymorphisms in damselflies.

Sexual conflict over mating has been documented in many species, both in the field and in experimental studies. In pond damselflies (family Coenagrionidae), sexual conflict maintains female-limited color polymorphisms, with one female morph typically being a male mimic. However, it is not known whether sexual conflict can also explain the evolutionary origin of novel female morphs, and if so, what ecological factors play a role in this macroevolutionary transition, by modulating the strength of the conflict.

Engaging Fathers in Child Nutrition: Exploring Intra-household Gender Dynamics in Nutrition Interventions in Ethiopia.

This study aims to examine intra-household gender dynamics in response to a nutrition intervention (maternal Behaviour Change Communication (BCC), paternal BCC, and food vouchers) aimed at improving IYCF practices using qualitative methods. Participants were drawn from a subset of households enrolled in a larger cluster - randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in rural Ethiopia. A total of 40 participants (20 mother-father pairs) from intervention and control households were interviewed separately to explore intra-dyadic beliefs and household decision-making.

Detection of pathogens in dogs with respiratory disease during winter 2023-2024 using multiplex qPCR/RT-qPCR assays and next-generation sequencing.

Canine Infectious Respiratory Disease Complex (CIRDC), caused by a diverse range of viral and bacterial pathogens, is the leading cause of respiratory illness in dogs. In the winter of 2023-2024, the United States experienced a noticeable increase in cases consistent with CIRDC. This study investigated the potential association of emerging pathogens with CIRDC cases.

Equine Sarcoid Arising From the Medial Caruncle With Invasion of the Third Eyelid in a Quarter Horse Gelding.

Objective: To describe the clinical and histologic features of a sarcoid arising from the medial caruncle with spread to the third eyelid of a horse.

Animal Studied: A 20-year-old Quarter Horse gelding.

Procedures: An incisional biopsy of the medial caruncle mass was initially performed, with histopathology suggesting a sarcoid or other spindle cell neoplasm.

Training of physical neural networks.

Physical neural networks (PNNs) are a class of neural-like networks that make use of analogue physical systems to perform computations. Although at present confined to small-scale laboratory demonstrations, PNNs could one day transform how artificial intelligence (AI) calculations are performed. Could we train AI models many orders of magnitude larger than present ones? Could we perform model inference locally and privately on edge devices? Research over the past few years has shown that the answer to these questions is probably "yes, with enough research".

Diagnosis and treatment of inguinal midline abdominal wall herniation of the urinary bladder in three domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus).

Inguinal herniation of the urinary bladder through the inguinal rings of domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) has been well-described in veterinary literature due to the inguinal rings remaining open throughout the lifespan of adult males. Midline body wall herniation has also been described in several veterinary species due to a variety of etiologies, including trauma, incisional dehiscence, and congenital anomalies. This phenomenon has not previously been described in rabbits.

Chemical Choreography at the Mn Oxide Interface: Protein Association Modulates Glyphosate Bonding Configurations and Favors the AMPA Oxidation Pathway.

Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide, undergoes adsorption and abiotic degradation on environmental surfaces, with natural organic matter strongly influencing these processes. The role of organo-mineral associations in regulating glyphosate retention and transformation pathways, however, remains unclear. In this study, we employed time-resolved ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and microfluidic experiments coupled with LC-MS quantification to track glyphosate and its oxidation byproducts.

aspartyl protease 2 is required for host cell egress of merozoites and male gametes.

The parasite causes severe diarrheal disease that can be life-threatening, and effective treatments are sorely lacking. Recently, aspartyl proteases (ASP) have emerged as targets with significant therapeutic potential in several related parasites resulting in the development of multiple potent leads. ASPs are critical to the proteolytic activation and maturation of secretory proteins parasites rely on to invade, manipulate, and upon completion of their replication cycle exit the host cells in which they reside.

Distribution of viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus in the nearshore fish community of the St. Lawrence River.

Objective: We investigated viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus dynamics in wild fish populations of the St. Lawrence River to compare host competency among five abundant native species and the invasive Round Goby Neogobius melanostomus following two decades of host-pathogen coevolution. To examine species' responses to the virus and identify principal hosts as viral reservoir species, we used viral surveillance among Round Gobies, Yellow Perch Perca flavescens, Rock Bass Ambloplites rupestris, Pumpkinseed Lepomis gibbosus, Bluegill L.

Biofluorescence as a tool to resolve crypsis in two bonefish species, Albula goreensis and Albula vulpes, with comments on other external morphology.

Bonefish Albula spp. in the Western Atlantic have historically been morphometrically and phenotypically indiscernible. We used biofluorescence in two sympatric, cryptic bonefish species, Albula goreensis and Albula vulpes, to develop a rapid and inexpensive in situ survey for species identification that can be used by managers and recreational anglers.