Potential of dip treatments to disinfest cuttings of the invasive Thrips parvispinus (Thysanoptera: Thripidae).

Thrips parvispinus (Karny) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae), an invasive thrips species, poses a significant threat to global agriculture due to its polyphagous nature and rapid spread. Its recent arrival in the continental United States raises concerns about potential impacts on ornamental and vegetable crops. Dip treatments might serve as a phytosanitary practice for growers to start with plants free of visible pests.

Acute encephalopathy without hyperammonemia has a different presentation than overt hepatic encephalopathy and displays similarly severe prognosis.

Background And Aims: In cirrhosis, some patients display acute encephalopathy without hyperammonemia (NonHep E) which is not considered as overt hepatic encephalopathy (OHE). We aimed to assess the prevalence and characteristics of NonHep E and OHE in cirrhotic patients displaying acute encephalopathy, assess their respective prognosis and compare it to other causes of acute decompensation (AD) with/without hyperammonemia.

Approach And Results: We conducted a retrolective analysis from a prospective cohort of patients hospitalized for AD.

First-Line Mobocertinib Versus Platinum-Based Chemotherapy in Patients With Exon 20 Insertion-Positive Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer in the Phase III EXCLAIM-2 Trial.

Purpose: Mobocertinib is an oral epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor that targets exon 20 insertion (ex20ins) mutations in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This open-label, phase III trial (EXCLAIM-2: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04129502) compared mobocertinib versus platinum-based chemotherapy as first-line treatment of ex20ins+ advanced/metastatic NSCLC.

Association of Year-to-Year Lipid Variability With Risk of Cognitive Decline and Dementia in Community-Dwelling Older Adults.

Background And Objectives: Lipid metabolism in older adults is affected by various factors including biological aging, functional decline, reduced physiologic reserve, and nutrient intake. The dysregulation of lipid metabolism could adversely affect brain health. This study investigated the association between year-to-year intraindividual lipid variability and subsequent risk of cognitive decline and dementia in community-dwelling older adults.

The TOXIN knowledge graph: supporting animal-free risk assessment of cosmetics.

The European Union's ban on animal testing for cosmetic products and their ingredients, combined with the lack of validated animal-free methods, poses challenges in evaluating their potential repeated-dose organ toxicity. To address this, innovative strategies like Next-Generation Risk Assessment (NGRA) are being explored, integrating historical animal data with new mechanistic insights from non-animal New Approach Methodologies (NAMs). This paper introduces the TOXIN knowledge graph (TOXIN KG), a tool designed to retrieve toxicological information on cosmetic ingredients, with a focus on liver-related data.

How a Medical Student Found Himself in a Human Genome Free for All.

In this short memoir, I recount the series of improbable interactions and events that led me from medical school to a leadership role in the Human Genome Project.

Protective Coating of Single-Crystalline Ni-Rich Cathode Enables Fast Charging in All-Solid-State Batteries.

Improving interfacial stability between cathode active material (CAM) and solid electrolyte (SE) is vital for developing high-performance all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs), with compatibility issues among the cell components representing a major challenge. CAM surface coating with a chemically inert ion conductor is a promising approach to suppress side reactions occurring at the cathode interfaces. Another strategy to mitigate mechanical degradation involves utilizing single-crystalline particle morphologies.

The Interaction Between Vowel Quality and Intensity in Loudness Perception of Short Vowels in Mongolian.

Purpose: This study investigated the influence of vowel quality on loudness perception and stress judgment in Mongolian, an agglutinative language with free word stress. We aimed to explore the effects of intrinsic vowel features, presentation order, and intensity conditions on loudness perception and stress assignment.

Method: Eight Mongolian short vowel phonemes (/ɐ/, /ə/, /i/, /ɪ/, /ɔ/, /o/, /ʊ/, and /u/) were recorded by a native Mongolian speaker of the Urad subdialect (the Chahar dialect group) in Inner Mongolia.

MELANOMAS, SARCOMAS, AND RENAL METASTASES IN THE LIVER: HOW TO TREAT?

Liver metastases from melanomas, sarcomas, and renal tumors are less frequent. Treatment and prognosis will depend on whether they are isolated or multiple, size and location, the presence or absence of extrahepatic neoplastic disease, age, stage of the initial disease, initial treatments instituted, time of evolution, and clinical condition of the patient. Recently, a high number of oncological therapies including monotherapy or in combination, neoadjuvants or adjuvants, and immuno-oncological treatments have been developed and tested, increasing disease-free time and survival.

Phase I Clinical Trial of High Doses of Seleno-L-methionine in Combination with Axitinib in Patients with Previously Treated Metastatic Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma.

Background: Data in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) xenografts defined the seleno-L-methionine (SLM) dose and the plasma selenium concentrations associated with the enhancement of HIF1α/2α degradation, stabilization of tumor vasculature, enhanced drug delivery, and efficacy of axitinib. The data provided the rationale for the development of this phase I clinical trial of SLM and axitinib in advanced or metastatic relapsed ccRCC.

Patients And Methods: Patients were ≥18 years with histologically and radiologically confirmed advanced or metastatic ccRCC who had received at least one prior systemic therapy, which could include axitinib (last dose ≥6 months prior to enrollment).

New PPARα Agonist A190-Loaded Microemulsion for Chemotherapy-Induced Peripheral Neuropathy.

Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a serious side effect of anticancer agents with limited effective preventive or therapeutic interventions. Although fenofibrate, a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-alpha (PPARα) agonist, has demonstrated neuroprotective and analgesic properties, its clinical utility is hindered by low receptor affinity, poor subtype selectivity, and suboptimal bioavailability. A190, a highly selective and potent nonfibrate PPARα agonist, offers a promising alternative but is limited by poor aqueous solubility, resulting in reduced oral bioavailability and therapeutic efficacy.

Ketogenesis supports hepatic polyunsaturated fatty acid homeostasis via fatty acid elongation.

Ketogenesis is a dynamic metabolic conduit supporting hepatic fat oxidation particularly when carbohydrates are in short supply. Ketone bodies may be recycled into anabolic substrates, but a physiological role for this process has not been identified. Here, we use mass spectrometry-based C-isotope tracing and shotgun lipidomics to establish a link between hepatic ketogenesis and lipid anabolism.

Massively parallel Hong-Ou-Mandel interference based on independent soliton microcombs.

Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interference is the foundation of quantum optics to test the degree of indistinguishability of two incoming photons, playing a key role in quantum communication, sensing, and photonic quantum computing. Realizing high-visibility HOM interference with massively parallel optical channels is challenging due to the lack of available natural optical references for aligning independent arrayed laser pairs. Here, we demonstrate 50 parallel comb-teeth pairs of continuous-wave weak coherent photons HOM interference using two independently frequency post-aligned soliton microcombs (SMCs), achieving an average fringe visibility over 46%.

Anti-icing properties of polar bear fur.

The polar bear () is the only Arctic land mammal that dives into water to hunt. Despite thermal insulation provided by blubber and fur layers and low Arctic temperatures, their fur is typically observed to be free of ice. This study investigates the anti-icing properties of polar bear fur.

Motion Hologram: Jointly optimized hologram generation and motion planning for photorealistic 3D displays via reinforcement learning.

Holography is capable of rendering three-dimensional scenes with full-depth control and delivering transformative experiences across numerous domains, including virtual and augmented reality, education, and communication. However, traditional holography presents 3D scenes with unnatural defocus and severe speckles due to the limited space bandwidth product of the spatial light modulator (SLM). Here, we introduce Motion Hologram, a holographic technique that accurately portrays photorealistic and speckle-free 3D scenes.

Safety-assured high-speed navigation for MAVs.

Micro air vehicles (MAVs) capable of high-speed autonomous navigation in unknown environments have the potential to improve applications like search and rescue and disaster relief, where timely and safe navigation is critical. However, achieving autonomous, safe, and high-speed MAV navigation faces systematic challenges, necessitating reduced vehicle weight and size for high-speed maneuvering, strong sensing capability for detecting obstacles at a distance, and advanced planning and control algorithms maximizing flight speed while ensuring obstacle avoidance. Here, we present the safety-assured high-speed aerial robot (SUPER), a compact MAV with a 280-millimeter wheelbase and a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 5.

Spherical harmonics texture extraction for versatile analysis of biological objects.

The characterization of phenotypes in cells or organisms from microscopy data largely depends on differences in the spatial distribution of image intensity. Multiple methods exist for quantifying the intensity distribution - or image texture - across objects in natural images. However, many of these texture extraction methods do not directly adapt to 3D microscopy data.

Solvent-Environment Dependence of the Excess Chemical Potential and Its Computation Scheme Formulated through Error Minimization.

Solvent environment may significantly affect the equilibria involving flexible solute species, such as proteins and polymers. In the present work, a computation scheme is formulated for the change in the excess chemical potential of a flexible solute molecule upon variation of the solvent condition. The formulation adopts the scheme of error minimization in parallel to the method of Bennett acceptance ratio, and an exact expression is presented that provides the change in the excess chemical potential from solvation free energies computed in two solvent conditions of interest.

Proteomic Analysis of Unicellular Cyanobacterium ATCC 51142 under Extended Light or Dark Growth.

The daily light-dark cycle is a recurrent and predictable environmental phenomenon to which many organisms, including cyanobacteria, have evolved to adapt. Understanding how cyanobacteria alter their metabolic attributes in response to subjective light or dark growth may provide key features for developing strains with improved photosynthetic efficiency and applications in enhanced carbon sequestration and renewable energy. Here, we undertook a label-free proteomic approach to investigate the effect of extended light (LL) or extended dark (DD) conditions on the unicellular cyanobacterium ATCC 51142.

Impact of Ligand-Induced Oligomer Dissociation on Enzyme Diffusion, Directly Observed at the Single-Molecule Level.

The existence of the phenomenon of enhanced enzyme diffusion (EED) has been a topic of debate in recent literature. One proposed mechanism to explain the origin of EED is oligomeric enzyme dissociation. We used mass photometry (MP), a label-free single-molecule technique, to investigate the dependence of the oligomeric states of several enzymes on their ligands.

NADPH oxidase derived ROS promote arterial contraction in early postnatal rats by activation of L-type voltage-gated Ca channels.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by NADPH oxidase promote contraction of peripheral arteries, which is especially pronounced in early postnatal period in comparison to adulthood, but the mechanisms of such vasomotor influence are poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that Rho-kinase and protein kinase C (PKC) mediate procontractile influence of NADPH oxidase derived ROS in peripheral artery of early postnatal rats. In addition, we evaluated the involvement Src-kinase and L-type voltage-gated Ca channels (LTCC) into procontractile influence of ROS, produced by NADPH oxidase, because of their known interplay with Rho-kinase and PKC pathways.

Machine-Learning Modeling of Elemental Ferroelectric Bismuth Monolayer.

The bismuth monolayer has recently been experimentally identified as a novel platform for the investigation of two-dimensional single-element ferroelectric system. Here, we model the potential energy surface of a bismuth monolayer by employing a message-passing neural network and achieve an error smaller than 1.2 meV per atom.

Distinguishing Charged Lepton Flavor Violation Scenarios with Inelastic μ→e Conversion.

The Mu2e and COMET experiments are expected to improve existing limits on charged lepton flavor violation (CLFV) by roughly 4 orders of magnitude. μ→e conversion experiments are typically optimized for electrons produced without nuclear excitation, as this maximizes the electron energy and minimizes backgrounds from the free decay of the muon. Here we argue that Mu2e and COMET will be able to extract additional constraints on CLFV from inelastic μ→e conversion, given the ^{27}Al target they have chosen and backgrounds they anticipate.

Second Law of Thermodynamics without Einstein Relation.

Materials that are constantly driven out of thermodynamic equilibrium, such as active and living systems, typically violate the Einstein relation. This may arise from active contributions to particle fluctuations which are unrelated to the dissipative resistance of the surrounding medium. We show that in these cases the widely used relation between informatic entropy production and heat dissipation does not hold.

Imiquimod Cream Preceded by Superficial Curettage vs Surgical Excision for Nodular Basal Cell Carcinoma: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial.

Background: Interest in noninvasive treatment of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) has been increasing. For superficial BCC, it has been demonstrated that imiquimod cream, 5%, has high long-term efficacy, but for nodular BCC (nBCC), long-term evidence is sparse.

Objectives: To evaluate whether superficial curettage (SC) followed by imiquimod cream, 5%, is noninferior to surgical excision (SE) in nBCC after 5 years of treatment.