Crystallinity of covalent organic frameworks controls immune responses.

Biomaterials can act as pro- or anti-inflammatory agents. However, effects of biomaterials crystallinity on immune responses are poorly understood. We demonstrate that the adjuvant-like behaviour of covalent organic framework (COF) biomaterial is dependent on its crystallinity.

Risk of Urinary Tract Infections in Male Veterans With Diabetes Prescribed Sodium-Glucose Cotransporter-2 Inhibitors Versus Sulfonylureas Across the Veterans Health Administration.

Due to their mechanism of action, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors (SGLT2is) carry a presumed increased risk of urinary tract infection (UTI) which is reflected in current prescribing data. As SGLT2i prescribing trends increase, some retrospective studies confirm an increased risk of UTI while conflicting studies find no increased risk of UTI associated with this therapy. This study aims to compare the odds of developing a UTI in male Veterans with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) on metformin taking a SGLT2i vs a sulfonylurea (SU) within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

Decoding the brain: From neural representations to mechanistic models.

A central principle in neuroscience is that neurons within the brain act in concert to produce perception, cognition, and adaptive behavior. Neurons are organized into specialized brain areas, dedicated to different functions to varying extents, and their function relies on distributed circuits to continuously encode relevant environmental and body-state features, enabling other areas to decode (interpret) these representations for computing meaningful decisions and executing precise movements. Thus, the distributed brain can be thought of as a series of computations that act to encode and decode information.

Acquiring musculoskeletal skills with curriculum-based reinforcement learning.

Efficient musculoskeletal simulators and powerful learning algorithms provide computational tools to tackle the grand challenge of understanding biological motor control. Our winning solution for the inaugural NeurIPS MyoChallenge leverages an approach mirroring human skill learning. Using a novel curriculum learning approach, we trained a recurrent neural network to control a realistic model of the human hand with 39 muscles to rotate two Baoding balls in the palm of the hand.