Publications by authors named "R James R Blair"

Preeclampsia (PE) is a life-threatening hypertensive disorder of pregnancy with an incidence rate of up to 8% worldwide. However, the complete pathogenesis is still unknown. Obesity increases the risk of developing PE three-fold.

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Background: Machine learning (ML) has developed classifiers differentiating patient groups despite concerns regarding diagnostic reliability. An alternative strategy, used here, is to develop a functional classifier (hyperplane) (e.g.

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mRNA vaccines were highly effective in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, making them an attractive platform to address cancers and other infectious diseases. Many new mRNA vaccines in development are multivalent, which represents a difficulty for the standard assays commonly used to characterize the critical quality attributes of monovalent formulations. Here, we present a multiplexed analytical tool with nucleic acid microarray technology using the VaxArray platform that measures the identity and quantity of mono- and multivalent mixtures of naked mRNA and mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticle formulations in under 2 h without any additional preparation steps, such as extraction or RT-PCR.

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Background: One in eight children experience early life stress (ELS), which increases risk for psychopathology. ELS, particularly neglect, has been associated with reduced responsivity to reward. However, little work has investigated the computational specifics of this disrupted reward response - particularly with respect to the neural response to Reward Prediction Errors (RPE) - a critical signal for successful instrumental learning - and the extent to which they are augmented to novel stimuli.

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Article Synopsis
  • Individuals with problematic methamphetamine use demonstrate significant working memory difficulties compared to those without such use, as evidenced by lower performance scores on working memory tasks.
  • Brain imaging revealed that individuals using methamphetamine had altered neural responses in areas crucial for processing cognitive load, specifically showing increased activation in frontoparietal areas but decreased activation in default-mode areas during working memory tasks.
  • There is a strong correlation between activation in frontoparietal regions and individual working memory ability, suggesting that these brain responses could be a neural marker for the working memory challenges faced by chronic methamphetamine users.
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