A dynamic spatiotemporal representation framework for deciphering personal brain function.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) opens a window on observing spontaneous activities of the human brain in vivo. However, the high complexity of fMRI signals makes brain functional representations intractable. Here, we introduce a state decomposition method to reduce this complexity and decipher individual brain functions at multiple levels.

Interferon-γ receptor signaling is critical for balanced immune activation and protection against influenza after vaccination.

To better understand the contribution of interferon-γ (IFN-γ) receptor signaling to vaccine-induced immunity, we employed A129 (IFN-α/β receptor-deficient) and AG129 (IFN-α/β/γ receptor-deficient) mouse models. AG129 mice induced comparable levels of virus-specific IgG after vaccination with influenza virus H5 hemagglutinin (HA) virus-like particles (VLPs). Vaccinated AG129 mice with HA VLPs exhibited impaired Th1-immune responses, lower hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) titers, increased susceptibility to virus infection, and lower survival rates following influenza virus (H5N1) challenge than vaccinated A129 mice.

A Causal Machine Learning Framework for Estimating the Impact of Cancer Diagnosis on Receipt of Advance Care Planning.

Objective: Develop a causal machine learning (causal ML) framework for estimating how a diagnosis (cancer in this study) affects the likelihood of receiving a specific health care service (advance care planning in this study) and associated heterogeneity.

Study Setting And Design: Our proposed framework leverages the causal forest method, combined with a population-weighted resampling and averaging over estimations strategy, to estimate average treatment effects (ATEs) and conditional average treatment effects (CATEs). Post hoc, we used best linear projections to identify covariates associated with variation in the CATEs.

The smell of Panulirus argus virus 1 (PaV1) infection: Disease-induced changes in metabolites in urine and hemolymph of Caribbean spiny lobsters Panulirus argus.

The Caribbean spiny lobster Panulirus argus is a social species in which individuals aggregate for protection during the day using chemicals in their urine as guiding cues. This behavior changes when animals are infected by Panulirus argus virus 1 (PaV1), such that healthy animals avoid the urine of diseased conspecifics. The aim of this study was to identify the molecules responsible for this switch in aggregation behavior.

Leveraging Influencers to Reach and Engage Vulnerable Individuals With a Digital Health Intervention: Quasi-Experimental Field Study.

Background: Noncommunicable diseases are the leading cause of death, present economic challenges to health care systems worldwide, and disproportionally affect vulnerable individuals with low socioeconomic status (SES). While digital health interventions (DHIs) offer scalable and cost-effective solutions to promote health literacy and encourage behavior change, key challenges concern how to effectively reach and engage vulnerable individuals. To this end, social media influencers provide a unique opportunity to reach millions, and lasting engagement can be ensured through the design of DHIs in a manner that specifically appeals to low-SES individuals through alignment with their social background.

Cannabinoid-Induced Hyperphagia is Mediated by Increased Meal Frequency and the Orexin-1 Receptor in Male Rats.

Exogenous cannabinoids have long been known to promote eating. However, the underlying mechanisms have not been completely elucidated, which is critical to understanding their utility. The orexin/hypocretin (OH) system of the lateral hypothalamus (LHA) has known anatomical, biochemical, and physiological interactions with the endocannabinoid system, and has an established role in promoting appetitive behavior; yet, it is still unknown if the OH system mediates food intake following cannabinoid administration.

Mapping menstrual health and hygiene progress in US schools: a systematic policy review and comparison across states.

Introduction: Menstrual health and hygiene (MHH) policy initiatives have emerged as a key strategy to improve adolescent MHH, particularly through the expansion of state-level legislation aimed at increasing access to menstrual materials in K-12 schools in the United States (US). However, limited research has evaluated the implementation or effectiveness of these policies, and efforts to rigorously track and characterize existing policies remain limited. This study systematically reviewed and characterized state-level policies concerning menstrual material access in K-12 schools.

Transitions and patterns in concurrent use of cigarettes and electronic cigarettes: An intensive longitudinal study of adults who smoke cigarettes and recently initiated e-cigarette use.

Background: There is a knowledge gap in the short- and long-term tobacco use patterns of adults who smoke cigarettes and initiate use of electronic cigarettes. This longitudinal study describes concurrent use transitions following e-cigarette initiation among adults who smoked cigarettes.

Methods: From December 2020-October 2021, US adults who smoked cigarettes and recently (re-)initiated e-cigarette use within the past month (N = 303) were recruited nationally for a one-year online study consisting of weekly surveys for three months followed by three quarterly surveys.

Quantitative modeling of multi-signal quorum-sensing maps environment to bacterial regulatory responses.

Bacterial quorum sensing is often mediated by multiple signaling systems that interact with each other. The quorum-sensing systems of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, for example, are considered hierarchical, with the las system acting as a master regulator. By experimentally controlling the concentration of auto-inducer signals in a signal deficient strain (PAO1ΔlasIΔrhlI), we show that the two primary quorum-sensing systems-las and rhl-act reciprocally rather than hierarchically.

Novel multimodal mechanical stimulation is superior to TENS to treat and prevent chronic low back pain: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Up to half of moderate-to-severe acute LBP (aLBP) progress to chronic (cLBP), with neuromotor, fascial, and muscle pathology contributing to inoperable mechanical disability. A novel thermomechanical stimulation (M-Stim) device delivering stochastic and targeted vibration frequencies relieved LBP in a pilot.

FDA approves Veozah (Fezolinetant) for menopausal symptoms: a new nonhormonal option.

Menopausal vasomotor symptoms (VMS), such as hot flashes and night sweats, significantly impact the quality of life for many women. While hormone therapy remains a standard treatment, it is not suitable for all patients due to contraindications, safety concerns, or personal preferences. Fezolinetant (Veozah), a non-hormonal neurokinin-3 receptor (NK3R) antagonist, has emerged as a novel alternative for managing moderate to severe menopausal VMS.

An Event-Level Examination of Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration: Effects of Alcohol, Instigation, and Regulatory Mechanisms.

Objective: The I model outlines how factors interact to predict intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration such as relationship tension, emotion regulation (ER) and distress tolerance difficulties, and alcohol use. Despite the model's emphasis on these factors' synergistic nature (i.e.

Dynamic Neuro-Glial-Vascular Responses in a Mouse Model of Vascular Cognitive Impairment.

Background: Chronic hypoperfusion is a risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. However, the sequence of events driving ischemia-induced functional changes in a cell-specific manner is unclear.

Methods: To address this gap in knowledge, we used the bilateral common carotid artery stenosis (BCAS) mouse model, and evaluated progressive functional changes to neurons, arterioles, astrocytes, and microglial cells at 14 and 28 days post-BCAS surgery.

Comparison of iSeq and Miseq in 16S rRNA sequencing-based human gut microbiome analysis.

Illumina's MiSeq platform is a common approach in 16S-based microbiome analysis. Such usage is self-perpetuating in that many studies seek to employ widely used approaches to facilitate comparison of their results to existing literature. Yet, a range of factors, including cost and equipment availability can necessitate alternate approaches.

Developmental shifts in testosterone levels are associated with alterations in the neural oscillatory dynamics serving selective attention.

The transition from childhood into adolescence is associated with marked increases in testosterone, a sex hormone that has been linked with significant changes in brain structure and function. However, the majority of the extant literature on sex hormone effects has focused on structural brain development, with far fewer studies examining changes in the neural dynamics serving higher-order cognitive function and behavioral improvements with development. Herein, we investigated whether the neural oscillatory dynamics serving selective attention were sensitive to testosterone levels as a marker of development in a sample of 87 participants aged 6-13 years old.

Host-Gated Enzymatic Release (H-GER) Enables Colorimetric Transduction for Enzyme Measurement.

We introduce Host-Gated Enzymatic Release (H-GER) as an alternative colorimetric signal transduction mechanism for measuring amylase activity. This assay uses a visually colored complex formed when hydroxypropyl-γ-cyclodextrin (HP-γ-CD) binds to the aggregachromic dye CRANAD-2, with the HP side chains playing a key role in the complexation. The analytical capability of this visually addressable assay relies on changes in dye dispersity, triggered by the enzymatic release of gated CRANAD-2 from HP-γ-CD host.

Using in vivo MRI to reveal circuits that are sensitive to traumatic stress in male and female rats.

Background: Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is debilitating and more prevalent in women than men. While this suggests there are sex differences in the way neural systems respond to traumatic stress, identifying these systems are challenging. As such, studies designed to identify neural systems that are differentially sensitive to traumatic stress are needed.

Reduced drinking as a mechanism for alcohol and violence-related intervention effects from Positive Change©.

Purpose: Alcohol use and sexual assault (SA) victimization often co-occur on college campuses, and prevention programs should ideally address both of these public health issues with integrated evidence-based interventions. Positive Change© is a web-based intervention with integrated content on alcohol and SA using personalized normative feedback tailored by participant gender identity and sexual orientation. Building from previous program evaluations, the current study examines alcohol use as a mediator for the intervention effects of Positive Change© on alcohol-related consequences, SA victimization likelihood, and SA victimization severity.

Effect of Dance Experience on Loading Patterns Among Ballroom Dancers.

Ballroom dance participation is growing due to its competitive, social, and health benefits. Despite its popularity, there is limited information regarding the biomechanics of ballroom dance. This study aimed to quantify the vertical ground reaction force and its loading rate during two common rhythm ballroom dance steps, and to determine the variance of these variables across three levels of ballroom dancers.

Changes in Price, Consumption, Prevalence and State Revenue of Transitioning Cigarette Sales to State-Controlled Outlets.

Introduction: Policies that phase out the retail sale of tobacco products have been recommended to accelerate the tobacco endgame and reach negligible tobacco use rates. Using simulation modeling, this study assessed how a policy that transitions cigarette sales to state-controlled outlets may change prices, and thus affect state revenue, cigarette pack sales and smoking prevalence.

Methods: Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and Tax Burden On Tobacco, models were developed to examine three potential scenarios resulting from a policy that transitions the sales of cigarette products to state-controlled outlets in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Virginia.

TransUNET-DDPM: A transformer-enhanced diffusion model for subject-specific brain network generation and classification.

Generative AI for image synthesis has significantly progressed with the advent of advanced diffusion models. These models have set new benchmarks in creating high-quality and meaningful visual information. In this paper, we introduce TransUNET-DDPM, a novel framework that fuses transformer-based architectures with denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPMs) to generate high-quality, 2D and 3D intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs).

A graph homomorphism approach for unraveling histories of metastatic cancers and viral outbreaks under evolutionary constraints.

Viral infections and cancers are driven by evolution of populations of highly mutable genomic variants. A key evolutionary process in these populations is their migration or spread via transmission or metastasis. Understanding this process is crucial for research, clinical practice, and public health, yet tracing spread pathways is challenging.

CO prodrugs: A new scaffold of adamantane-fused norbornen-7-ones with tunable water solubility.

We have had a long-standing interest in developing organic prodrugs for controlled delivery of CO for various therapeutic applications. Based on an earlier approach of taking advantage of a cheletropic extrusion reaction of norbornadienone to release CO, a new structural scaffold of CO prodrugs has been designed using an adamantane moiety instead of aryl groups for stabilizing a critical precursor structure, cyclopentadienone. This approach allows for elimination of multiple aromatic groups on the previous scaffolds and offers a handle for installing additional moieties for improving solubility.

Murine Cytomegalovirus and Human Cytomegalovirus Differ in Pyroptosis Induction in Different Cell Types During Productive Replication.

Pyroptosis is a proinflammatory programmed cell death (PCD) that protects the host against invading viruses. We previously reported that pyroptosis plays a prominent role in the pathogenesis of murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) retinal necrosis using mice with MAIDS as a mouse model for AIDS-related human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) retinal necrosis. Because MCMV and HCMV exhibit species specificity, we sought to determine if pyroptosis induction extends to different cell types of murine or human origin.