Publications by authors named "E T B FRANCIS"

Background: Pregnancy is a unique stage of the life course characterized by trade-offs between the nutritional, immune, and metabolic needs of the mother and fetus. The Camden Study was originally initiated to examine nutritional status, growth, and birth outcomes in adolescent pregnancies and expanded to study dietary and molecular predictors of pregnancy complications and birth outcomes in young women.

Methods: From 1985-2006, 4765 pregnant participants aged 12 years and older were recruited from Camden, NJ, one of the poorest cities in the US.

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Pregnancies complicated by maternal obesity are characterized by metabolic differences affecting placental nutrient transport and fetal development. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is critical for fetal brain development and is primarily incorporated into phosphatidylcholine (PC). Recent evidence suggests choline may enhance PC-DHA synthesis; however, data on the impact of maternal plasma choline on placental phospholipid DHA content in females with obesity are limited.

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Biological cells rely on precise spatiotemporal coordination of biochemical reactions to control their functions. Such cell signaling networks have been a common focus for mathematical models, but they remain challenging to simulate, particularly in realistic cell geometries. Here we present Spatial Modeling Algorithms for Reactions and Transport (SMART), a software package that takes in high-level user specifications about cell signaling networks and then assembles and solves the associated mathematical systems.

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Background: Covered stent correction for a sinus venosus atrial septal defect (SVASD) was first performed in 2009. This innovative approach was initially viewed as experimental and was reserved for highly selected patients with unusual anatomic variants. In 2016, increasing numbers of procedures began to be performed, and in several centers, it is now offered as a standard of care option alongside surgical repair.

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The ongoing outbreak of Marburg virus disease (MVD) in Rwanda marks the third largest historically, though it has exhibited the lowest fatality rate. Genomic analysis of samples from 18 cases identified a lineage with limited internal diversity, closely related to a 2014 Ugandan case. Our findings suggest that the Rwandan lineage diverged decades ago from a common ancestor shared with diversity sampled from bats in Uganda.

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