Nutritional Criminology: Why the Emerging Research on Ultra-Processed Food Matters to Health and Justice.

There is mounting concern over the potential harms associated with ultra-processed foods, including poor mental health and antisocial behavior. Cutting-edge research provides an enhanced understanding of biophysiological mechanisms, including microbiome pathways, and invites a historical reexamination of earlier work that investigated the relationship between nutrition and criminal behavior. Here, in this perspective article, we explore how this emergent research casts new light and greater significance on previous key observations.

Fifteen Years of Sm-p80-Based Vaccine Trials in Nonhuman Primates: Antibodies From Vaccinated Baboons Confer Protection and From and Identification of Putative Correlative Markers of Protection.

Recent advances in systems biology have shifted vaccine development from a largely trial-and-error approach to an approach that promote rational design through the search for immune signatures and predictive correlates of protection. These advances will doubtlessly accelerate the development of a vaccine for schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease that currently affects over 250 million people. For over 15 years and with contributions of over 120 people, we have endeavored to test and optimize Sm-p80-based vaccines in the non-human primate model of schistosomiasis.

Comparison of the novel dipstick DNA extraction technique with two established techniques for use in biological barcoding.

The novel dipstick DNA extraction method was tested for its reliability and usability for biological barcoding in comparison to a commercial kit and to a simplified isopropanol precipitation method using crayfish gill tissue. Following DNA extraction, the mitochondrial COI-gene was amplified in a PCR-reaction using a standard set of universal invertebrate primers. All three extraction techniques resulted in successful amplifications.

Modeling Pancreatic Cancer Dynamics with Immunotherapy.

We develop a mathematical model of pancreatic cancer that includes pancreatic cancer cells, pancreatic stellate cells, effector cells and tumor-promoting and tumor-suppressing cytokines to investigate the effects of immunotherapies on patient survival. The model is first validated using the survival data of two clinical trials. Local sensitivity analysis of the parameters indicates there exists a critical activation rate of pro-tumor cytokines beyond which the cancer can be eradicated if four adoptive transfers of immune cells are applied.

Time-domain simulation of ultrasound propagation with fractional Laplacians for lossy-medium biological tissues with complicated geometries.

Simulations of ultrasound wave propagation inside biological tissues have a wide range of practical applications. In previous studies, wave propagation equations in lossy biological media are solved either with convolutions, which consume a large amount of memory, or with pseudo-spectral methods, which cannot handle complicated geometries effectively. The approach described in the paper employed a fractional central difference method (FCD), combined with the immersed boundary (IB) method for the finite-difference, time-domain simulation.

A Random Forest-Induced Distance-Based Measure of Physiologic al Dysregulation.

Background: Aging involves gradual, multisystemic Physiological Dysregulation (PD) which increases risk of age-related comorbidities. Ability to quantify age-related PD could provide insights into biological mechanisms underlying the aging process. One approach to measuring PD exploits the fact that increasing PD manifests as a gradual deviation of physiological parameters away from normal levels.

Kinetic stability and heat capacity of vapor-deposited glasses of o-terphenyl.

The reversing heat capacity of vapor-deposited o-terphenyl glasses was determined by in situ alternating current nanocalorimetry. Glasses were deposited at substrate temperatures ranging from 0.39 Tg to Tg, where Tg is the glass transition temperature.