Measuring the Stable Isotope Composition of Water in Brine from Halite Fluid Inclusions and Borehole Brine Seeps Using Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy.

Naturally occurring bedded salt deposits are considered robust for the permanent disposal of heat-generating nuclear waste due to their unique physical and geological properties. The Brine Availability Test in Salt (BATS) is a US-DOE Office of Nuclear Energy funded project that uses heated borehole experiments underground (∼655 meters depth) at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the bedded salt deposits of the Salado Formation to investigate the capacity for safe disposal of high-level, heat generating nuclear waste in salt. Uncertainties associated with brine mobility near heat-generating waste motivates the need to characterize the processes and sources of brine in salt deposits.

Evaluation of a context-aware chatbot using retrieval-augmented generation for answering clinical questions on medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw.

The potential of large language models (LLMs) in medical applications is significant, and Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) can address the weaknesses of these models in terms of data transparency and scientific accuracy by incorporating current scientific knowledge into responses. In this study, RAG and GPT-4 by OpenAI were applied to develop GuideGPT, a context aware chatbot integrated with a knowledge database from 449 scientific publications designed to provide answers on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of medication-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (MRONJ). A comparison was made with a generic LLM ("PureGPT") across 30 MRONJ-related questions.

Investigation of Oxidative-Stress Impact on Human Osteoblasts During Orthodontic Tooth Movement Using an In Vitro Tension Model.

In recent years, there has been a growing number of adult orthodontic patients with periodontal disease. The progression of periodontal disease is well-linked to oxidative stress (OS). Nevertheless, the impact of OS on orthodontic tooth movement (OTM) is not fully clarified.

Functional and Biological Characterization of the LGR5Δ5 Splice Variant in HEK293T Cells.

The regulator of the canonical Wnt pathway, leucine-rich repeat-containing G protein-coupled receptor 5 (LGR5), is expressed in the stem cell compartment of several tissues and overexpressed in different human carcinomas. The isoform of the stem cell marker LGR5, named LGR5Δ5 and first described by our group, is associated with prognosis and metastasis in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and soft tissue sarcoma (STS). In a proof-of-principle analysis, the function of LGR5Δ5 was investigated in HEK293T cells, a model cell line of the Wnt pathway, compared to full-length LGR5 (FL) expression.

Competitive exclusion among self-replicating molecules curtails the tendency of chemistry to diversify.

The transition of chemistry into biology is poorly understood. Key questions include how the inherently divergent nature of chemical reactions can be curtailed, and whether Darwinian principles from biology extend to chemistry. Addressing both questions simultaneously, we now show that the evolutionary principle of competitive exclusion, which states that a single niche can be stably occupied by only one species, also applies to self-replicating chemical systems, and that this principle diminishes the tendency of chemistry to diversify.