Aggregative responses of marine predators to a pulsed resource.

Pulsed resources resulting from animal migrations represent important, transient influxes of high resource availability into recipient communities. The ability of predators to respond and exploit these large increases in background resource availability, however, may be constrained when the timing and magnitude of the resource pulse vary across years. In coastal Newfoundland, Canada, we studied aggregative responses of multiple seabird predators to the annual inshore pulse of a key forage fish species, capelin (Mallotus villosus).

Re-evaluating retrosynthesis algorithms with Syntheseus.

Automated synthesis planning has recently re-emerged as a research area at the intersection of chemistry and machine learning. Despite the appearance of steady progress, we argue that imperfect benchmarks and inconsistent comparisons mask systematic shortcomings of existing techniques, and unnecessarily hamper progress. To remedy this, we present a synthesis planning library with an extensive benchmarking framework, called SYNTHESEUS, which promotes best practice by default, enabling consistent meaningful evaluation of single-step and multi-step synthesis planning algorithms.

A novel Na1.5-dependent feedback mechanism driving glycolytic acidification in breast cancer metastasis.

Solid tumours have abnormally high intracellular [Na]. The activity of various Na channels may underlie this Na accumulation. Voltage-gated Na channels (VGSCs) have been shown to be functionally active in cancer cell lines, where they promote invasion.

Intraspecies warfare restricts strain coexistence in human skin microbiomes.

Determining why only a fraction of encountered or applied bacterial strains engraft in a given person's microbiome is crucial for understanding and engineering these communities. Previous work has established that metabolism can determine colonization success , but relevance of bacterial warfare in preventing engraftment has been less explored. Here, we demonstrate that intraspecies warfare presents a significant barrier to strain transmission in the skin microbiome by profiling 14,884 pairwise interactions between cultured from eighteen human subjects from six families.

Click, Compute, Create: A Review of Web-based Tools for Enzyme Engineering.

Enzyme engineering, though pivotal across various biotechnological domains, is often plagued by its time-consuming and labor-intensive nature. This review aims to offer an overview of supportive in silico methodologies for this demanding endeavor. Starting from methods to predict protein structures, to classification of their activity and even the discovery of new enzymes we continue with describing tools used to increase thermostability and production yields of selected targets.

Blending Indigenous and western science: Quantifying cultural burning impacts in Karuk Aboriginal Territory.

The combined effects of Indigenous fire stewardship and lightning ignitions shaped historical fire regimes, landscape patterns, and available resources in many ecosystems globally. The resulting fire regimes created complex fire-vegetation dynamics that were further influenced by biophysical setting, disturbance history, and climate. While there is increasing recognition of Indigenous fire stewardship among western scientists and managers, the extent and purpose of cultural burning is generally absent from the landscape-fire modeling literature and our understanding of ecosystem processes and development.

Highly-resolved within-species dynamics in the human facial skin microbiome.

Human facial skin microbiomes (FSMs) on adults are dominated by just two bacterial species, and . Underlying this apparent simplicity, each FSM harbors multiple strains of both species whose assembly dynamics on individuals are unknown. Here, we use 4,055 isolate genomes and 360 metagenomes to trace the dynamics of strains on individuals and their transmission.

Nonequilibrium sensing of volatile compounds using active and passive analyte delivery.

Although sensor technologies have allowed us to outperform the human senses of sight, hearing, and touch, the development of artificial noses is significantly behind their biological counterparts. This largely stems from the sophistication of natural olfaction, which relies on both fluid dynamics within the nasal anatomy and the response patterns of hundreds to thousands of unique molecular-scale receptors. We designed a sensing approach to identify volatiles inspired by the fluid dynamics of the nose, allowing us to extract information from a single sensor (here, the reflectance spectra from a mesoporous one-dimensional photonic crystal) rather than relying on a large sensor array.

Structure of the Reductase Domain of a Fungal Carboxylic Acid Reductase and Its Substrate Scope in Thioester and Aldehyde Reduction.

The synthesis of aldehydes from carboxylic acids has long been a challenge in chemistry. In contrast to the harsh chemically driven reduction, enzymes such as carboxylic acid reductases (CARs) are considered appealing biocatalysts for aldehyde production. Although structures of single- and didomains of microbial CARs have been reported, to date no full-length protein structure has been elucidated.

The 340B Program and Health Disparities Among Medicare Beneficiaries With Chronic Asthma.

The study objective was to determine whether the discounts provided under the 340B program help address disparities in drug treatment and adverse outcomes among Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS) beneficiaries initially Medicare-diagnosed with moderate to severe chronic asthma. Using Medicare FFS claims data from 2017 to 2019, we conducted a cross-sectional study that compared risk-adjusted differences in 5 treatment measures and 5 adverse outcomes among beneficiaries treated within 340B and non-340B hospital systems that met the disproportionate share (DSH) criteria and the ownership classification requirement to qualify as a 340B DSH hospital. Our analysis focused on potential disparities that are historically associated with challenges to accessing quality health care.

CPEB3 low-complexity motif regulates local protein synthesis via protein-protein interactions in neuronal ribonucleoprotein granules.

Biomolecular condensates, membraneless organelles found throughout the cell, play critical roles in many aspects of cellular function. Ribonucleoprotein granules (RNPs) are a type of biomolecular condensate necessary for local protein synthesis and are involved in synaptic plasticity and long-term memory. Most of the proteins in RNPs possess low-complexity motifs (LCM), allowing for increased promiscuity of protein-protein interactions.

DOCKSTRING: Easy Molecular Docking Yields Better Benchmarks for Ligand Design.

The field of machine learning for drug discovery is witnessing an explosion of novel methods. These methods are often benchmarked on simple physicochemical properties such as solubility or general druglikeness, which can be readily computed. However, these properties are poor representatives of objective functions in drug design, mainly because they do not depend on the candidate compound's interaction with the target.

Optimization of Detection of Gadodiamide Brain Retention in Rats Using Quantitative T Mapping and Intraperitoneal Administration.

Background: Currently, the gadolinium retention in the brain after the use of contrast agents is studied by T -weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (T w) and T mapping. The former does not provide easily quantifiable data and the latter requires prolonged scanning and is sensitive to motion. T mapping may provide an alternative approach.

Can Digital Instruments Like the Macula-App Support AMD Therapy?

Background: A long lasting and continuous anti VEGF-therapy represents a gold standard in nAMD treatment to maintain and stabilize vision in the individual patient. Disease Management represents a daily life challenge for patients and relatives and "Real-life" clinical outcomes of patients treated with IVOM therapy are often inferior to results from randomized clinical trials. After their diagnosis, AMD-patients undergo individualized long-term therapeutic approaches.

Association of the Oncology Care Model With Value-Based Changes in Use of Radiation Therapy.

Purpose: Radiation utilization for breast cancer and metastatic bone disease varies in modality, fractionation, and cost, despite evidence demonstrating equal effectiveness and consensus recommendations such as Choosing Wisely that advocate for higher value care. We assessed whether the Oncology Care Model (OCM), an alternative payment model for practices providing chemotherapy to patients with cancer, affected the overall use and value of radiation therapy in terms of Choosing Wisely recommendations.

Methods And Materials: We used Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrative data to identify beneficiaries enrolled in traditional fee-for-service Medicare who initiated chemotherapy episodes at OCM and propensity-matched comparison practices.

The Oncology Care Model and Adherence to Oral Cancer Drugs: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis.

Background: Adherence to oral cancer drugs is suboptimal. The Oncology Care Model (OCM) offers oncology practices financial incentives to improve the value of cancer care. We assessed the impact of OCM on adherence to oral cancer therapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), prostate cancer, and breast cancer.

Effects of single and dual-stressor elevation of environmental temperature and P on metabolism and acid-base regulation in the Louisiana red swamp crayfish, Procambarus clarkii.

Elevation of temperature and CO levels within the world's aquatic environments is expected to cause numerous physiological challenges to their inhabitants. While effects on marine ecosystems have been well studied, freshwater ecosystems have rarely been examined using a dual-stressor approach leaving our understanding of its inhabitants upon these challenges unclear. We aimed to identify the affects of elevated temperature and hypercapnia in isolation and in combination on the metabolic and acid-base regulatory processes of a freshwater crayfish, Procambarus clarkii.

Anatomy promotes neutral coexistence of strains in the human skin microbiome.

What enables strains of the same species to coexist in a microbiome? Here, we investigate whether host anatomy can explain strain co-residence of Cutibacterium acnes, the most abundant species on human skin. We reconstruct on-person evolution and migration using whole-genome sequencing of C. acnes colonies acquired from healthy subjects, including from individual skin pores, and find considerable spatial structure at the level of pores.

Written standard sentence materials convey social information.

The Harvard/IEEE (henceforth H/I) sentences are widely used for testing speech recognition in English. This study examined whether two talker characteristics, race and gender, are conveyed by 80 of the H/I sentences in their written form, and by a comparison set of sentences from the internet message board Reddit, which were expected to convey social information. As predicted, a significant proportion of raters reported perceiving race and gender information in the H/I sentences.

Association of Participation in the Oncology Care Model With Medicare Payments, Utilization, Care Delivery, and Quality Outcomes.

Importance: In 2016, the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services initiated the Oncology Care Model (OCM), an alternative payment model designed to improve the value of care delivered to Medicare beneficiaries with cancer.

Objective: To assess the association of the OCM with changes in Medicare spending, utilization, quality, and patient experience during the OCM's first 3 years.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Exploratory difference-in-differences study comparing care during 6-month chemotherapy episodes in OCM participating practices and propensity-matched comparison practices initiated before (January 2014 through June 2015) and after (July 2016 through December 2018) the start of the OCM.

Perceiving gender while perceiving language: Integrating psycholinguistics and gender theory.

There is a substantial body of literature showing that men and women speak differently and that these differences are endemic to the speech signal. However, the psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the integration of social category perception and language are still poorly understood. Speaker attributes such as emotional state, age, sex, and race have often been treated in the literature as dissociable, but perceptual systems for social categories demonstrably rely on interdependent cognitive processes.

Evaluation of Five Data-to-Action Workshops to Enhance Capacity for Tobacco Control.

Background: Five data-to-action workshops were conducted during 2016-2019 with participants from 38 countries. The purpose of the workshops is to use data to inform and disseminate tobacco prevention and control strategies. We evaluated the workshops using the Kirkpatrick Model for evaluation of trainings.

Social Inference May Guide Early Lexical Learning.

We incorporate social reasoning about groups of informants into a model of word learning, and show that the model accounts for infant looking behavior in tasks of both word learning and recognition. Simulation 1 models an experiment where 16-month-old infants saw familiar objects labeled either correctly or incorrectly, by either adults or audio talkers. Simulation 2 reinterprets puzzling data from the Switch task, an audiovisual habituation procedure wherein infants are tested on familiarized associations between novel objects and labels.