Publications by authors named "Benjamin Bachman"
Article Synopsis
- Thalamo-cortical networks play a crucial role in seizures, but the exact mechanisms behind their initiation are still unclear.
- This study investigates the ventral posteromedial nucleus (VPM) of the thalamus as a potential source of generalized convulsive motor seizures, using an in vivo optogenetic mouse model to examine thalamic neuron activity during seizures.
- Findings suggest that diverse neural activity in the VPM, along with significant contributions from inputs like the cerebellum, is essential for seizure initiation, with lidocaine injections into cerebellar nuclei effectively blocking the seizures.
Solvated electrons in water have long been of interest to chemists. While readily produced using intense multiphoton excitation of water and/or irradiation with high-energy particles, the possible role of solvated electrons in electrochemical and photoelectrochemical reactions at electrodes has been controversial. Recent studies showed that excitation of electrons to the conduction band of diamond leads to barrier-free emission of electrons into water.
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- Researchers are exploring the functionalization of diamond surfaces with TEMPO and other paramagnetic species to enhance chemical detection using quantum color defects like SiV and NV centers.
- Previous methods struggled with effective surface functionalization, but this study demonstrates a well-controlled technique using carboxylic acid groups linked by carbon tethers to create high-quality TEMPO-modified diamond surfaces.
- The study reports a higher surface density of TEMPO on nanodiamond (1.4 molecules/nm) and planar diamond (3.3 molecules/nm) compared to previous techniques, while using ζ-potential to monitor reaction progress and identify reaction selectivity.
Scientific progress depends on formulating testable hypotheses informed by the literature. In many domains, however, this model is strained because the number of research papers exceeds human readability. Here, we developed computational assistance to analyze the biomedical literature by reading PubMed abstracts to suggest new hypotheses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectrocatalyst (EC)-modified semiconductor (SC) photoelectrodes are key elements of solar water-splitting systems. The SC|EC interface affects the composite photoelectrode behavior but is poorly understood. We uncover the role of EC activity and SC|EC interface properties using a range of metal (Ni, Fe, Ni-Fe, Co, Ir) oxide or (oxy)hydroxide ECs deposited on model single-crystal n-TiO2 photoanodes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Most proteins lack experimentally validated functions. To address this problem, we implemented the Evolutionary Trace Annotation (ETA) method in the Cytoscape network visualization environment. The result is the ETAscape plugin, which builds a structural genomics network based on local structural and evolutionary similarities among proteins and then globally diffuses known annotations across the resulting network.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith genomic data skyrocketing, their biological interpretation remains a serious challenge. Diverse computational methods address this problem by pointing to the existence of recurrent patterns among sequence, structure, and function. These patterns emerge naturally from evolutionary variation, natural selection, and divergence--the defining features of biological systems--and they identify molecular events and shapes that underlie specificity of function and allosteric communication.
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