Protocol of the Nutritional, Psychosocial, and Environmental Determinants of Neurodevelopment and Child Mental Health (COINCIDE) study.

Background: Over 250 million children are developing sub-optimally due to their exposure to early life adversities. While previous studies have examined the effects of nutritional status, psychosocial adversities, and environmental pollutants on children's outcomes, little is known about their interaction and cumulative effects.

Objectives: This study aims to investigate the independent, interaction, and cumulative effects of nutritional, psychosocial, and environmental factors on children's cognitive development and mental health in urban and rural India.

Identification of key regulators in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using network theoretical approach.

Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a devastating disease with poor clinical outcomes, which is mainly because of delayed disease detection, resistance to chemotherapy, and lack of specific targeted therapies. The disease's development involves complex interactions among immunological, genetic, and environmental factors, yet its molecular mechanism remains elusive. A major challenge in understanding PDAC etiology lies in unraveling the genetic profiling that governs the PDAC network.

Evolutionary Novelties in Bacteria and the Missing Backdrop of the Environment.

Evolutionary novelty has been one of the central themes in the field of evolutionary biology for many years. Structural and functional innovations such as scales in the reptiles, fins in the fishes and mammary glands in the mammals have been the focus of the studies. Insights obtained from these studies have shaped the criterion for the identification of novelty as well as provide the framework for studying novelty.

Category-biased patches encircle core domain-general regions in the human lateral prefrontal cortex.

The fine-grained functional organization of the human lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) remains poorly understood. Previous fMRI studies delineated focal domain-general, or multiple-demand (MD), PFC areas that co-activate during diverse cognitively demanding tasks. While there is some evidence for category-selective (face and scene) patches, in human and non-human primate PFC, these have not been systematically assessed.

Dynamics of Pyrene Excimer in a Cholesteryl-based Supramolecular Host Matrix.

Aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) reduces luminescence and compromises brightness in solid-state displays, necessitating strategies to mitigate its effects for enhanced performance. This study presents cost-effective method to mitigate ACQ of pyrene by co-assembling polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons within low molecular weight gelator. ​Synthesized from readily available materials-cholesteryl chloroformate and pentaerythritol-in one-step reaction, gelator incorporates four cholesteryl units, reported to promote robust supramolecular gels in various solvents.

AxLaM: energy-efficient accelerator design for language models for edge computing.

Modern language models such as bidirectional encoder representations from transformers have revolutionized natural language processing (NLP) tasks but are computationally intensive, limiting their deployment on edge devices. This paper presents an energy-efficient accelerator design tailored for encoder-based language models, enabling their integration into mobile and edge computing environments. A data-flow-aware hardware accelerator design for language models inspired by Simba, makes use of approximate fixed-point POSIT-based multipliers and uses high bandwidth memory (HBM) in achieving significant improvements in computational efficiency, power consumption, area and latency compared to the hardware-realized scalable accelerator Simba.

Magnetic vortex: Fundamental physics, developments, and device applications.

A magnetic vortex (MV) is one of the fundamental and topologically nontrivial spin textures in condensed matter physics. Magnetic vortices are usually the ground states in geometrically restricted ferromagnets with zero magnetocrystalline anisotropy. Magnetic vortices have recently been proposed for use in a variety of spintronics applications due to their resistance to thermal perturbations, flexibility in changing core polarity, simple patterning procedure, and potential uses in magnetic data storage with substantial density, sensors for the magnetic field, devices for logic operations, and other related fields.

Circadian Proteomics Reassesses the Temporal Regulation of Metabolic Rhythms by Chlamydomonas Clock.

Circadian clocks execute temporal regulation of metabolism by modulating the timely expression of genes. Clock regulation of mRNA synthesis was envisioned as the primary driver of these daily rhythms. mRNA oscillations often do not concur with the downstream protein oscillations, revealing the importance to study protein oscillations.

BharatSim: An agent-based modelling framework for India.

BharatSim is an open-source agent-based modelling framework for the Indian population. It can simulate populations at multiple scales, from small communities to states. BharatSim uses a synthetic population created by applying statistical methods and machine learning algorithms to survey data from multiple sources, including the Census of India, the India Human Development Survey, the National Sample Survey, and the Gridded Population of the World.

Telomere length sensitive regulation of interleukin receptor 1 type 1 (IL1R1) by the shelterin protein TRF2 modulates immune signalling in the tumour microenvironment.

Telomeres are crucial for cancer progression. Immune signalling in the tumour microenvironment has been shown to be very important in cancer prognosis. However, the mechanisms by which telomeres might affect tumour immune response remain poorly understood.

Mechano-regulation of germline development, maintenance, and differentiation.

Biochemical signaling arising from mechanical force-induced physical changes in biological macromolecules is a critical determinant of key physiological processes across all biological lengths and time scales. Recent studies have deepened our understanding of how mechano-transduction regulates somatic tissues such as those in alveolar, gastrointestinal, embryonic, and skeleto-muscular systems. The germline of an organism has a heterogeneous composition - of germ cells at different stages of maturation and mature gametes, often supported and influenced by their accessory somatic tissues.

Effect of Transition Metal Variability in NNN-Pincer Complexes on Catalytic CO Reduction to Methanol.

The catalytic efficiency of M-Htpda pincer complexes (M=Mn(I), Fe(II), Co(III)) in CO hydrogenation, emphasizing the role of transition metal variability have been discussed. The DFT analysis demonstrates that complexes with low αR values form weaker M-H bonds, enhancing catalyst reactivity with the elongation of M-H bond. The analysis further displays excellent catalytic performance for Mn-Htpda (ΔE=20.

Chemically Robust Cationic Porous Organic Polymer (POP) for Selective Detection and Removal of ReO as a Surrogate of Radioactive TcO.

The efficient removal of TcO from alkaline nuclear waste is vital for optimizing nuclear waste management and safeguarding the environment. However, current state-of-the-art sorbent materials are constrained by their inability to simultaneously achieve high alkali resistance, rapid adsorption kinetics, large adsorption capacity, and selectivity. In this study, we synthesized a urea-rich cationic porous organic polymer, IPM-403, which demonstrates exceptional chemical stability, ultrafast kinetics (~92 % removal within 30 seconds), high adsorption capacity (664 mg/g), excellent selectivity, along with multiple-cycle recyclability (up to 7 cycles), making it highly promising for the removal of ReO (surrogate of TcO ) from nuclear wastewater.

Estimating the effect of annual PM exposure on mortality in India: a difference-in-differences approach.

Background: In 2019, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study attributed 0·98 million deaths to ambient air pollution in India based on potentially inappropriate exposure-response functions from countries with low air pollution levels. Instead, using data from India, we investigated long-term exposure to PM and all-cause mortality with a causal inference method.

Methods: We collected national counts of annual mortality from 2009 to 2019 from the Civil Registration System at the district level to calculate annual district-level mortality rate as our main outcome and obtained annual PM concentrations from a high-resolution spatiotemporal model.

Optimized high-yield expression of envelope glycoprotein domain III from dengue virus serotypes 1 to 4.

Dengue virus (DENV) envelope glycoprotein Domain III (EDIII) is critical for viral entry, highly immunogenic, and induces robust neutralizing antibody response. It is a prominent candidate for designing subunit-based vaccines and can also be harnessed as an antigenic bait for isolation of neutralizing human mAbs. Here, we describe an optimized method for high-yield expression of recombinant domain EDIII protein from DENV serotypes 1 to 4 in different Escherichia coli (E.

Two new taxa of brush-footed butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) from the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot, southern India.

A new species, Amathusia travancorica sp. nov. (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae: Amathusiini), and a new subspecies, Athyma inara sahyadriensis ssp.

Purification and characterization of kyasanur forest disease virus EDIII domain of major envelope glycoprotein.

Current research efforts are underway to create novel approaches for the efficient diagnosis, monitoring, and mitigation of Kyasanur Forest Disease Virus (KFDV) infections. Flavivirus subunit-based vaccines based on envelope glycoprotein EDIII are now in preclinical and clinical research stages. Efficient purification and isolation methods for surface immunogenic viral antigens, including the recombinant envelope immunoglobulin-like domain III (rEDIII) protein, are crucial for the production and manufacturing of promising vaccine candidates that have been extensively assessed in previous literature.

Bicyclic (alkyl)(amino)carbenes (BICAACs): synthesis, characteristics, and applications.

Carbenes in general and isolable NHCs (N-heterocyclic carbenes) in particular have been useful ligands in recent years. The emergence of CAACs [cyclic(alkyl)(amino)carbenes], BICAACs [bicyclic(alkyl)(amino)carbenes], and many other carbenes has marked revolutionary milestones in this field. These carbenes possess an intriguing blend of highly electrophilic and nucleophilic characteristics, owing to their remarkably narrow HOMO-LUMO energy gap.

Queer- and trans-inclusive faculty hiring-A call for change.

As queer and trans scientists, we face varied and systemic barriers to our professional success, resulting in our relative absence from faculty ranks at many institutions. In this Perspective, we call for a change in faculty hiring practices and present concrete guidance to make it a more inclusive process.

The next 1000 days: building on early investments for the health and development of young children.

Following the first 1000 days of life that span from conception to two years of age, the next 1000 days of a child's life from 2-5 years of age offer a window of opportunity to promote nurturing and caring environments, establish healthy behaviours, and build on early gains to sustain or improve trajectories of healthy development. This Series paper, the first of a two-paper Series on early childhood development and the next 1000 days, focuses on the transition to the next 1000 days of the life course, describes why this developmental period matters, identifies the environments of care, risks, and protective factors that shape children's development, estimates the number of children who receive adequate nurturing care, and examines whether current interventions are meeting children's needs. Paper 2 focuses on the cost of inaction and the implications of not investing in the next 1000 days.

How does contact valence and group salience affect outgroup attitudes in asynchronous computer mediated contact? Experiments on intergroup contact via social media posts.

The prejudice reduction potential of face-to-face intergroup contact is widely established, but we know much less about computer-mediated intergroup contact (online contact) specifically via social media where interactions are less controlled and mostly asynchronous. Additionally, much of the work on online contact has focused on positive, controlled contact, neglecting the effect of negative contact. We examined the effects of mediated contact via online posts with differing valence (positive, negative, and neutral) in three experimental studies, in an imaginary scenario (Study 1:  = 120) and a real intergroup scenario with South and North Indians (Study 2:  = 296, Study 3:  = 336).

Exploring cross-α amyloids: from functional roles to design innovations.

Amyloids are filamentous protein aggregates that have traditionally been associated with neurodegenerative diseases, although they are also known to play pivotal functional roles across diverse forms of life. Although the cross-β structure has represented the hallmark of amyloidal assemblies, a cross-α structure was recently characterized as a functional microbial amyloid, and further work has shown that de novo designed sequences also assemble into cross-α amyloids, emphasizing cross-α as an alternative paradigm for self-assembly into ordered aggregates. In this review, we summarize recent discoveries of cross-α amyloids both in nature and artificially designed systems, and we describe their fundamental structural organization, self-assembly mechanisms, and biological functions.

Nationwide analysis of air pollution hotspots across India: A spatiotemporal PM trend analysis (2008-2019).

Introduction: India experiences high levels of air pollution as measured by fine particulate matter <2.5 μm (PM) across the country. With limited resources, it is imperative to identify the most impacted areas.