Publications by authors named "M C Nagaraj"

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, largely due to its poor five-year survival rate and frequent late-stage diagnosis. A significant barrier to early detection even in high-risk cohorts is that the pancreas often appears morphologically normal during the pre-diagnostic phase. Yet, the disease can progress rapidly from subclinical stages to widespread metastasis, undermining the effectiveness of screening.

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Introduction: Trauma team performance, measured by the non-technical skills scale T-NOTECHS, has been shown to impact patient outcomes. We assess how personnel movements affect non-technical skills and time of resuscitation(TOR) using trauma video review.

Methods: A prospective study of blunt and/or penetrating trauma activations recorded between May and November 2023 ​at a Level-I trauma center.

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Article Synopsis
  • Functional amyloids, essential for the well-being of organisms from bacteria to humans, differ from disease-related amyloids by having their fibrillation regulated by cellular mechanisms and specific sequences, including gatekeeper residues such as Asp.
  • Research on the functional amyloid CsgA from E. coli revealed that adding more Asp gatekeepers reduces fibrillation by mainly influencing the initial formation of aggregates, while established fibrils remain stable.
  • NMR analysis indicated that even with added gatekeepers, CsgA retains its intrinsically disordered nature; however, there is a notable decrease in transient interactions between monomeric CsgA and its fibrils, showcasing the significance of these interactions in the fibrillation process.
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Objective: Our institution recently implemented a virtual reality (VR) skills curriculum for general surgery residents using the SimNow simulator. Based on a content alignment study, we revised the curriculum to include only 20 of 33 VR tasks and we added 3 previously validated inanimate tasks. The purpose of this study was to establish expert-derived proficiency levels for all tasks and to evaluate the validity of the scoring for the VR tasks.

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It is not well understood why severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 spreads much faster than other β-coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV. In a previous publication, we predicted the binding of the N-terminal domain (NTD) of SARS-CoV-2 spike to sialic acids (SAs). Here, we experimentally validate this interaction and present simulations that reveal a second possible interaction between SAs and the spike protein via a binding site located in the receptor-binding domain (RBD).

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