Background: While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) markers of neurodegeneration are nonspecific to Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology, they have been correlated with cognitive dysfunction, and therefore, provide important information pertaining to disease staging. Neurodegeneration in AD is commonly assessed with macrostructural measures of brain atrophy, such as hippocampal volume. However, recent investigations have shown that markers of neural microstructure derived from diffusion MRI (DWI) may provide supplementary insight into the progression of AD pathophysiology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Residence in highly socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods has recently been associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology at autopsy, cognitive decline, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) markers of volumetric brain atrophy in cognitively unimpaired adults. Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that markers of brain microstructure derived from diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI), including neurite density index (NDI), orientation dispersion index (ODI), and isotropic volume fraction (ISO), are sensitive to AD-related neurodegeneration. In this study, we used linear mixed-effects (LME) modeling to investigate the hypothesis that neighborhood-level disadvantage is associated with mixed-longitudinal trajectories of microstructural neurodegeneration in 539 late-middle-aged participants across the AD continuum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhole genome sequencing (WGS) is pivotal for the molecular characterization of ()-the leading bacterial cause of sexually transmitted infections and infectious blindness worldwide. WGS can inform epidemiologic, public health and outbreak investigations of these human-restricted pathogens. However, challenges persist in generating high-quality genomes for downstream analyses given its obligate intracellular nature and difficulty with propagation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is well established that the long-range van der Waals or thermal Casimir interaction between two semi-infinite dielectrics separated by a distance H is screened by an intervening electrolyte. Here we show how this interaction is modified when an electric field of strength E is applied parallel to the dielectric boundaries, leading to a nonequilibrium steady state with a current. The presence of the field induces a long-range thermal repulsive interaction, scaling just like the thermal Casimir interaction between dielectrics without the intervening electrolyte, i.
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