From Breaking Bad to Breaking Bonds-Mass Spectrometry in the Classroom.

We describe a workshop that prompts chemistry students in the final 2 years of secondary school to apply their understanding of modern analytical chemistry techniques to a 'real world' example. The scenario used is that of a forensic science laboratory that has been asked to determine the structure of an illicit compound, Revisomed (methamphetamine) being sold as a revision aid, and seized by police. Over the course of an hour, the students use a combination of infrared (IR) spectroscopy, liquid chromatography (LC), high-resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy data to determine the structure of Revisomed from first principles.

Heterogeneous and higher-order cortical connectivity undergirds efficient, robust, and reliable neural codes.

We hypothesized that the heterogeneous architecture of biological neural networks provides a substrate to regulate the well-known tradeoff between robustness and efficiency, thereby allowing different subpopulations of the same network to optimize for different objectives. To distinguish between subpopulations, we developed a metric based on the mathematical theory of simplicial complexes that captures the complexity of their connectivity by contrasting its higher-order structure to a random control and confirmed its relevance in several openly available connectomes. Using a biologically detailed cortical model and an electron microscopic dataset, we showed that subpopulations with low simplicial complexity exhibit efficient activity.

Phenotypic and genotypic characterization of pyrazinamide resistance-India, 2018-2020.

Pyrazinamide (PZA) is a key first-line antituberculosis drug that plays an important role in eradicating persister (TB) bacilli and shortening the duration of tuberculosis treatment. However, PZA-resistance is on the rise, particularly among persons with multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis. This nationwide study was conducted to explore the prevalence of mutations conferring PZA resistance, catalogue mutation diversity, investigate the associations of PZA resistance with specific lineages, examine co-resistance to 13 first- and second-line drugs, and evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of sequencing A and D genes for predicting PZA resistance.

Standardized pipelines support and facilitate integration of diverse datasets at the Rat Genome Database.

The Rat Genome Database (RGD) is a multispecies knowledgebase which integrates genetic, multiomic, phenotypic, and disease data across 10 mammalian species. To support cross-species, multiomics studies and to enhance and expand on data manually extracted from the biomedical literature by the RGD team of expert curators, RGD imports and integrates data from multiple sources. These include major databases and a substantial number of domain-specific resources, as well as direct submissions by individual researchers.

Gaps in disability inclusion across universities in the United States.

Disabled people face social and environmental barriers to higher education, yet there is a dearth of clear, publicly available information on university websites related to accessibility and disability inclusion. Our team previously developed disability inclusion scores for the top 50 universities offering undergraduate programs based on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and found low scores overall. Building on that, this study examines the relationship between disability inclusion (as scores ranging from 0 to 100 points) and six university characteristics for these 50 universities.