Publications by authors named "Venkataraman V"

Unlabelled: The mechanosensory lateral line system of aquatic vertebrates comprises a superficial network of distributed sensory organs, the neuromasts, which are arranged over the head and trunk and innervated by lateral line nerves to allow detection of changes in water flow and pressure. While the well-studied zebrafish posterior lateral line has emerged as a powerful model to study collective cell migration, far less is known about development of the anterior lateral line, which produces the supraorbital and infraorbital lines around the eye, as well as mandibular and opercular lines over the jaw and cheek. Here we show that normal development of the zebrafish anterior lateral line system from cranial placodes is dependent on another vertebrate-specific cell type, the cranial neural crest.

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  • James Neel's Thrifty Genotype Hypothesis suggests that genetic traits promoting energy conservation and fat storage were advantageous during resource-scarce periods in human evolution but now contribute to modern health issues like obesity and type 2 diabetes in industrialized societies.
  • Despite its popularity and extensive citations, the applicability of the Thrifty Genotype Hypothesis to current human health remains debatable, leading to exploration of other theories such as the Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis.
  • The text emphasizes the need for new empirical research, particularly through partnerships with transitioning subsistence-level communities, to better understand the impact of evolutionary history on modern cardiometabolic health, using the Orang Asli of Malaysia as a case study.
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  • The study aimed to compare the plasma extracellular vesicles (EVs) from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) patients and healthy people using special technology and machine learning.
  • Researchers collected blood samples and used different methods to analyze the size and composition of the EVs.
  • Results showed that DMD patients had unique differences in their plasma EVs, and the researchers developed a model to classify these differences successfully, even with fewer samples.
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Characterizing DNA methylation patterns is important for addressing key questions in evolutionary biology, geroscience, and medical genomics. While costs are decreasing, whole-genome DNA methylation profiling remains prohibitively expensive for most population-scale studies, creating a need for cost-effective, reduced representation approaches (i.e.

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Background: Many subsistence-level and Indigenous societies around the world are rapidly experiencing urbanization, nutrition transition, and integration into market-economies, resulting in marked increases in cardiometabolic diseases. Determining the most potent and generalized drivers of changing health is essential for identifying vulnerable communities and creating effective policies to combat increased chronic disease risk across socio-environmental contexts. However, comparative tests of how different lifestyle features affect the health of populations undergoing lifestyle transitions remain rare, and require comparable, integrated anthropological and health data collected in diverse contexts.

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Background: Coagulopathies are frequently observed in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (ARMS), with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) being the most common presentation. However, hyperfibrinolysis represents a distinct but often overlapping and potentially life-threatening subset of coagulation disorders that requires specific diagnostic and management approaches.

Key Clinical Question: How can clinicians identify hyperfibrinolysis and what are the implications for management?

Clinical Approach: This case report describes a 25-year-old man with metastatic ARMS arising from the prostate who developed persistent gross hematuria one week after initiating chemotherapy.

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Purpose: While cytotoxic chemotherapy is the standard first-line treatment for patients with metastatic soft-tissue sarcoma (STS), clinical outcomes remain suboptimal. Our prior study showed lurbinectedin plus doxorubicin is well tolerated with promising clinical activity in STS. We designed this phase 1b trial to optimize dosing as the basis for a randomized trial in leiomyosarcoma and to further explore the safety profile and efficacy signal.

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Background: Increased blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability and amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides (especially Aβ1-42) (Aβ42) have been linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis, but the nature of their involvement in AD-related neuropathological changes leading to cognitive changes remains poorly understood.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that chronic extravasation of bloodborne Aβ42 peptide and brain-reactive autoantibodies and their entry into the brain parenchyma via a permeable BBB contribute to AD-related pathological changes and cognitive changes in a mouse model.

Methods: The BBB was rendered chronically permeable through repeated injections of Pertussis toxin (PT), and soluble monomeric, fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled or unlabeled Aβ42 was injected into the tail-vein of 10-month-old male CD1 mice at designated intervals spanning ∼3 months.

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We demonstrate a high brightness (∼2.36 × 10 pairs/s/mW) polarization-entangled photon-pair source at 800-nm via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in a 3-cm long type-II ppKTP crystal pumped unidirectionally in a single-pass geometry. A high coincidences-to-accidentals ratio (CAR ∼ 1200) depicted by our source indicates a strong temporal correlation between the generated photon pairs.

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Background: The prevalence of mental health struggles among students in medical school is widely reported; however, little is known about how it is impacted by the medical school curriculum. This study aimed to evaluate differences in anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion in medical students based on gender, class year, and curriculum.

Methods: An anonymous online survey consisting of questions from established, validated questionnaires about demographics, anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion, and personal health behaviors was sent to 817 medical students who attended Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine during the Spring of 2021.

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  • * The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis suggests that humans evolved under environments that are now drastically different, leading to genetic traits that may contribute to these diseases today.
  • * The proposal involves using genomic tools with subsistence-level groups adapting to new lifestyles, allowing researchers to study genetic and environmental influences on NCDs across various ancestries and cultures.
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Studying the diet and feeding behavior of primates is essential to understanding their ecology and designing effective conservation plans. Despite decades of study on the hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas) in lowland habitats, little is known about the feeding ecology of this species in highland ecosystems. To address this empirical gap, we tracked temporal changes in vegetation abundance and their relation to the dietary choices of hamadryas baboons in highland habitat at Borena-Sayint National Park (BSNP) in northern Ethiopia.

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Most gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) are driven by activating mutations in Proto-oncogene c-KIT (KIT) or PDGFRA receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK). The emergence of effective therapies targeting these mutations has revolutionized the management of advanced GIST. However, following initiation of first-line imatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), nearly all patients will develop resistance within 2 years through the emergence of secondary resistance mutations in KIT, typically in the Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP)-binding site or activation loop of the kinase domain.

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Vivek V. Venkataraman introduces gelada monkeys.

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Background: Double reading (DR) in screening mammography increases cancer detection and lowers recall rates, but has sustainability challenges due to workforce shortages. Artificial intelligence (AI) as an independent reader (IR) in DR may provide a cost-effective solution with the potential to improve screening performance. Evidence for AI to generalise across different patient populations, screening programmes and equipment vendors, however, is still lacking.

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Globally, we are witnessing the rise of complex, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) related to changes in our daily environments. Obesity, asthma, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes are part of a long list of "lifestyle" diseases that were rare throughout human history but are now common. A key idea from anthropology and evolutionary biology-the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis-seeks to explain this phenomenon.

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Summary: Radiographic imaging techniques provide insight into the imaging features of tumor regions of interest, while immunohistochemistry and sequencing techniques performed on biopsy samples yield omics data. Relationships between tumor genotype and phenotype can be identified from these data through traditional correlation analyses and artificial intelligence (AI) models. However, the radiogenomics community lacks a unified software platform with which to conduct such analyses in a reproducible manner.

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Cooperation in food acquisition is a hallmark of the human species. Given that costs and benefits of cooperation vary among production regimes and work activities, the transition from hunting-and-gathering to agriculture is likely to have reshaped the structure of cooperative subsistence networks. Hunter-gatherers often forage in groups and are generally more interdependent and experience higher short-term food acquisition risk than horticulturalists, suggesting that cooperative labour should be more widespread and frequent for hunter-gatherers.

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Research among non-industrial societies suggests that body kinematics adopted during running vary between groups according to the cultural importance of running. Among groups in which running is common and an important part of cultural identity, runners tend to adopt what exercise scientists and coaches consider to be good technique for avoiding injury and maximising performance. In contrast, among groups in which running is not particularly culturally important, people tend to adopt suboptimal technique.

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We demonstrate a spectrally correlated photon-pair source at telecom wavelengths (spanning across the S-, C-, and L-bands), based on type-0 spontaneous parametric downconversion (SPDC) in a fiber-coupled Zn-indiffused MgO doped periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) ridge waveguide. Modal analysis of the waveguide performed through numerical finite element method (FEM) simulation indicates that device temperature can be used to dramatically vary and control the emission spectrum. Efficient photon-pair generation is measured over a broad wavelength range from ∼1520 - 1580 nm [full width at half maximum (FWHM) > 45 nm] with a coincidence-to-accidental ratio (CAR) as high as ∼668 and spectral brightness ∼2.

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Introduction: Non-communicable disease (NCD) risk is influenced by environmental factors that are highly variable worldwide, yet prior research has focused mainly on high-income countries where most people are exposed to relatively homogeneous and static environments. Understanding the scope and complexity of environmental influences on NCD risk around the globe requires more data from people living in diverse and changing environments. Our project will investigate the prevalence and environmental causes of NCDs among the indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia, known collectively as the Orang Asli, who are currently undergoing varying degrees of lifestyle and sociocultural changes that are predicted to increase vulnerability to NCDs, particularly metabolic disorders and musculoskeletal degenerative diseases.

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Article Synopsis
  • Soft electronic skin (soft-e-skin) mimics human skin's touch and pressure sensitivity, crucial for fields like robotics and healthcare, but previous efforts were limited by complex and costly production methods.
  • A new 3D printable soft-e-skin made from a durable polymer overcomes these challenges, achieving extreme sensitivity to pressure (up to 150 kPa) and showing impressive long-term stability.
  • This innovative design features optical waveguides and flexible sensors that allow for large-scale and cost-effective manufacturing, making it suitable for various practical applications.
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