Restoration treatments enhance tree growth and alter climatic constraints during extreme drought.

The frequency and severity of drought events are predicted to increase due to anthropogenic climate change, with cascading effects across forested ecosystems. Management activities such as forest thinning and prescribed burning, which are often intended to mitigate fire hazard and restore ecosystem processes, may also help promote tree resistance to drought. However, it is unclear whether these treatments remain effective during the most severe drought conditions or whether their impacts differ across environmental gradients.

Hyperspectral imaging in animal coloration research: A user-friendly pipeline for image generation, analysis, and integration with 3D modeling.

Hyperspectral imaging-a technique that combines the high spectral resolution of spectrophotometry with the high spatial resolution of photography-holds great promise for the study of animal coloration. However, applications of hyperspectral imaging to questions about the ecology and evolution of animal color remain relatively rare. The approach can be expensive and unwieldy, and we lack user-friendly pipelines for capturing and analyzing hyperspectral data in the context of animal color.

Can we do better with Mylotarg? Model-based assessment of opportunities to improve therapeutic index.

Late-stage clinical trial failures increase the overall cost and risk of bringing new drugs to market. Determining the pharmacokinetic (PK) drivers of toxicity and efficacy in preclinical studies and early clinical trials supports quantitative optimization of drug schedule and dose through computational modeling. Additionally, this approach permits prioritization of lead candidates with better PK properties early in development.

Computational identification of antibody-binding epitopes from mimotope datasets.

A fundamental challenge in computational vaccinology is that most B-cell epitopes are conformational and therefore hard to predict from sequence alone. Another significant challenge is that a great deal of the amino acid sequence of a viral surface protein might not in fact be antigenic. Thus, identifying the regions of a protein that are most promising for vaccine design based on the degree of surface exposure may not lead to a clinically relevant immune response.

Looking under the lamp-post: quantifying the performance of contact tracing in the United States during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Contact tracing forms a crucial part of the public-health toolbox in mitigating and understanding emergent pathogens and nascent disease outbreaks. Contact tracing in the United States was conducted during the pre-Omicron phase of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This tracing relied on voluntary reporting and responses, often using rapid antigen tests due to lack of accessibility to PCR tests.