Publications by authors named "Alexander Miller"

We applied a classifier method to predict palladium catalysts for the formation of nonalternating polyketones via the copolymerization of CO and ethylene; current examples are limited to using phosphine sulfonate and diphosphazane monoxide supporting ligands. With the reported workflow, we discovered two new classes of palladium complexes capable of achieving the synthesis of nonalternating polyketones with a lower CO content than those made by known palladium catalysts. Our results show that we doubled the number of classes of palladium compounds that can catalyze the formation of this type of polymer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

RNA-sequencing has improved the diagnostic yield of individuals with rare diseases. Current analyses predominantly focus on identifying outliers in single genes that can be attributed to cis-acting variants within the gene locus. This approach overlooks causal variants with trans-acting effects on splicing transcriptome-wide, such as variants impacting spliceosome function.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on using transition metals, specifically rhenium, to split nitrogen (N) and form metal nitride complexes, which could lead to efficient electrochemical nitrogen fixation to create ammonia under mild conditions.
  • The proposed nitrogen fixation cycle involves binding N to form a complex, cleaving the N bridge, and then undergoing proton/electron transfer to produce ammonia, while a catalyst must fulfill specific electronic requirements during these processes.
  • The introduction of an isocyanide ligand in the rhenium system helps facilitate electron reduction and protonation, increasing the stability of the process and enabling ammonia production, demonstrating how modifying supporting ligands can improve reactivity in synthetic cycles for nitrogen conversion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The reduction of CO to synthetic fuels is a valuable strategy for energy storage. However, the formation of energy-dense liquid fuels such as methanol remains rare, particularly under low-temperature and low-pressure conditions that can be coupled to renewable electricity sources via electrochemistry. Here, a multicatalyst system pairing an electrocatalyst with a thermal organometallic catalyst is introduced, which enables the reduction of CO to methanol at ambient temperature and pressure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Successful cecal intubation is crucial in ensuring a complete evaluation of the colonic mucosa. Although completion of colonoscopies should be successful in close to 100% of all examinations in the hands of experienced gastroenterologists, there are some patients with colons which can be difficult to navigate. Factors such as older age, presence of diverticular disease, as well as high or low body mass index can present challenges for endoscopists.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Psychosis symptom assessment instruments are rarely used in US mental health community clinical practice despite the advantages of measurement-based care. Barriers include the length of typical scales and that data for scale evaluation often come from researcher and not clinician raters.

Study Design: The 12-item COMPASS symptom assessment was designed for the RAISE-ETP study of early phase psychosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study analyzed data from the New Hampshire Colonoscopy Registry to identify factors affecting colonoscopy cecal intubation rates, focusing on patient demographics and endoscopist characteristics.
  • Results indicated that women, older patients, and those with certain BMI categories (either low or high) were less likely to have complete colonoscopies, with men having a higher completion rate.
  • Endoscopist factors such as specialization in gastroenterology and higher adenoma detection rates were associated with increased likelihoods of completion, particularly impacting thin women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Esophageal cancer is frequently treated with esophagectomy, which is associated with distinct complications. Delayed gastric conduit emptying is a well-recognized complication that usually occurs within the postoperative period. By contrast, gastric tube volvulus is a rarer complication with a more variable time course of onset after esophagectomy and can be mistaken for delayed gastric conduit emptying.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The 1,2-insertion reaction of CO into metal-hydride bonds of d-octahedral complexes to give κ--metal-formate products is the key step in various CO reduction schemes and as a result has attracted extensive mechanistic investigations. For many octahedral catalysts, CO insertion follows an associative mechanism in which CO interacts directly with the coordinated hydride ligand instead of the more classical dissociative mechanism that opens an empty coordination site to bind the substrate to the metal prior to a hydride migration step. To better understand the associative mechanism, we conducted a systematic quantum chemical investigation on the reaction between CO and -(bpy)Re(CO)H (-Re-H; bpy = 2,2'-bipyridine) starting with the gas phase and then moving to THF and other solvents with increased dielectric constants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The Baeyer-Villiger oxidation is an important process for converting ketones into esters, typically done with hard-to-handle peroxides.
  • Researchers have developed an electrochemical method that uses water as the oxygen source, overcoming previous low selectivity issues by employing the FeO catalyst to enhance reaction selectivity.
  • By confining the reactions to the catalyst surfaces, unwanted side reactions are minimized, leading to a more efficient and selective nucleophilic oxidation process in electrochemical organic synthesis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A number of studies have demonstrated the role of sex in regulating immune responses to vaccination. However, these findings have been limited to adults for both human and animal models. As a result, our understanding of the impact of sex on vaccine responses in the newborn is highly limited.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Correct coding is an important component of effective dermatology practice management. Over the past several years there have been updates to many commonly used codes within dermatology. This review highlights many of these updates, such as: the skin biopsy codes have been subdivided to reflect the different biopsy techniques.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogen bonding networks are ubiquitous in biological systems and play a key role in controlling the conformational dynamics and allosteric interactions of enzymes. Yet in small organometallic catalysts, hydrogen bonding rarely controls ligand binding to the metal center. In this work, a hydrogen bonding network within a well-defined organometallic catalyst works in concert with cation-dipole interactions to gate substrate access to the active site.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hydrogen evolution is an important fuel-generating reaction that has been subject to mechanistic debate about the roles of monometallic and bimetallic pathways. The molecular iridium catalysts in this study undergo photoelectrochemical dihydrogen (H) evolution via a bimolecular mechanism, providing an opportunity to understand the factors that promote bimetallic H-H coupling. Covalently tethered diiridium catalysts evolve H from neutral water faster than monometallic catalysts, even at lower overpotential.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The loss of the tail is among the most notable anatomical changes to have occurred along the evolutionary lineage leading to humans and to the 'anthropomorphous apes', with a proposed role in contributing to human bipedalism. Yet, the genetic mechanism that facilitated tail-loss evolution in hominoids remains unknown. Here we present evidence that an individual insertion of an Alu element in the genome of the hominoid ancestor may have contributed to tail-loss evolution.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Millions of tons of acetyl derivatives such as acetic acid and acetic anhydride are produced each year. These building blocks of chemical industry are elaborated into esters, amides, and eventually polymer materials, pharmaceuticals, and other consumer products. Most acetyls are produced industrially using homogeneous precious metal catalysts, principally rhodium and iridium complexes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Seven-coordinate rhenium oxo complexes supported by a tetradentate bipyridine carboxamide/carboxamidate ligand are reported. The neutral dicarboxamide Hbpy-da ligand initially coordinates in an L (ONNO) fashion to an octahedral rhenium oxo precursor, yielding a seven-coordinate rhenium oxo complex. Subsequent deprotonation generates a new oxo complex featuring the dianionic (LX) carboxamidate (NNNN) form of the ligand.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We report ultrafast x-ray scattering experiments of the quasi-1D charge density wave (CDW) material (TaSe_{4})_{2}I following ultrafast infrared photoexcitation. From the time-dependent diffraction signal at the CDW sidebands we identify a 0.11 THz amplitude mode derived primarily from a transverse acoustic mode of the high-symmetry structure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Area-based index of multiple deprivation (IMD) indicators of financial hardship lack individual specificity and sensitivity. This study compared self-reports of hardship with area measures in relation to health status.

Methods: Interviews in one London Borough, reported financial hardship and health status.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Before the widespread use of the transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt, portal hypertension was addressed by the creation of an operative distal splenorenal shunt (DSRS). DSRS was largely regarded as a safe and effective therapy, though it did have a risk of precipitating hyperammonaemia and hepatic encephalopathy.A woman suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Subunit or inactivated vaccines are commonly used but often less effective than live vaccines, necessitating boosters and adjuvants for better immune responses.
  • Research has shown that directly linking adjuvants to antigens can enhance vaccine effectiveness, as seen in the development of an inactivated influenza A vaccine combined with the adjuvant resiquimod (R848).
  • The study found that varying the crosslinker used to connect R848 to the virus influenced how well the vaccine stimulated immune response, affecting cytokine production and antibody levels in both lab and mouse model experiments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Olfactory navigation is universal across the animal kingdom. Humans, however, have rarely been considered in this context. Here, we combined olfactometry techniques, virtual reality (VR) software, and neuroimaging methods to investigate whether humans can navigate an olfactory landscape by learning the spatial relationships among discrete odor cues and integrating this knowledge into a spatial map.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To assess and compare subsequent hospital admissions within 30 days for patients after receiving a prescription for either oral nirmatrelvir/ritonavir or oral molnupiravir.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of 3207 high-risk, non-hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients who received a prescription for molnupiravir (n = 209) or nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (n = 2998) at an academic medical centre in New York City from April to December 2022. Variables including age, vaccination status, high-risk conditions and demographic factors were pulled from the electronic medical record.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF