Functional optimality underpins the repeated evolution of the extreme "saber-tooth" morphology.

"Saber teeth"-elongate, blade-like canines-are a classic example of convergence, having evolved repeatedly throughout mammalian history. Within canine teeth, there is a trade-off between the aspects of shape that improve food fracture and those that increase tooth strength. Optimal morphologies strike a balance between these antagonistic functional criteria.

Direct electron detection for EBSD of low symmetry & beam sensitive ceramics.

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is a powerful tool for determining the orientations of near-surface grains in engineering materials. However, many ceramics present challenges for routine EBSD data collection and indexing due to small grain sizes, high crack densities, beam and charge sensitivities, low crystal symmetries, and pseudo-symmetric pattern variants. Micro-cracked monoclinic hafnia, tetragonal hafnon, and hafnia/hafnon composites exhibit all such features, and are used in the present work to show the efficacy of a novel workflow based on a direct detecting EBSD sensor and a state-of-the-art pattern indexing approach.

Cocaine taking and craving produce distinct transcriptional profiles in dopamine neurons.

Dopamine (DA) signaling plays an essential role in reward valence attribution and in encoding the reinforcing properties of natural and artificial rewards. The adaptive responses from midbrain dopamine neurons to artificial rewards such as drugs of abuse are therefore important for understanding the development of substance use disorders. Drug-induced changes in gene expression are one such adaptation that can determine the activity of dopamine signaling in projection regions of the brain reward system.

Cumulative Health Risk from Exposure Load (CHREL): Looking at multi-chemical exposures through the lens of biomonitoring guidance values.

Exposure load (EL) is an indicator of multiple chemical exposures based on human biomonitoring data. We used EL methodology and human biomonitoring health-based guidance values (HB2GVs) as exposure thresholds to create a new metric called Cumulative Health Risk from Exposure Load (CHREL). HB2GVs are derived by calculating the concentration of a biomarker consistent with a health protective exposure guidance value.