A synchronized event-cue feedback loop integrating a 3D printed wearable flexible sensor-tactor platform.

Wearable devices designed for the somatosensory system aim to provide event-cue feedback electronics and therapeutic stimulation to the peripheral nervous system. This prompts a neurological response that is relayed back to the central nervous system. Unlike virtual reality tools, these devices precisely target peripheral mechanoreceptors by administering specific stimuli.

Risk-stratified Care Improves Pain-related Knowledge and Reduces Psychological Distress for Low Back Pain: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Trial.

Background: A number of efforts have been made to tailor behavioral healthcare treatments to the variable needs of patients with low back pain (LBP). The most common approach involves the STarT Back Screening Tool (SBST) to triage the need for psychologically informed care, which explores concerns about pain and addresses unhelpful beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Such beliefs that pain always signifies injury or tissue damage and that exercise should be avoided have been implied as psychosocial mediators of chronic pain and can impede recovery.

Does Resilience Change in Patients Undergoing Shoulder Surgery? A Retrospective Comparative Study Utilizing the Brief Resilience Scale.

Background: Resilience refers to the ability to adapt or recover from stress. There is increasing appreciation that it plays an important role in wholistic patient-centered care and may affect patient outcomes, including those of orthopaedic surgery. Despite being a focus of the current orthopaedic evidence, there is no strong understanding yet of whether resilience is a stable patient quality or a dynamic one that may be modified perioperatively to improve patient-reported outcome scores.

REVEAL-CP: Selective Screening of Pediatric Patients for Aromatic L-Amino Acid Decarboxylase Deficiency with a Guthrie Card and Structural Modeling of One Index Case.

The main objective of this prospective, multicenter study (REVEAL-CP) was to test children with cerebral palsy-like signs and symptoms for raised 3--methyldopa (3-OMD) blood levels, a biomarker for aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase deficiency (AADCd). A secondary objective was to characterize the molecular basis for the defective aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) gene product. Patients were identified in pediatric secondary and tertiary care hospitals through database searches and personal communication.

Understanding the Lymphatic System: Tissue-on-Chip Modeling.

The lymphatic vasculature plays critical roles in maintaining fluid homeostasis, transporting lipid, and facilitating immune surveillance. A growing body of work has identified lymphatic dysfunction as contributing to the severity of myriad diseases and to systemic inflammation, as well as modulating drug responses. Here, we review efforts to reconstruct lymphatic vessels in vitro toward establishing humanized, functional models to advance understanding of lymphatic biology and pathophysiology.

The Dynamics, Degradation, and Afterlives of Pectins: Influences on Cell Wall Assembly and Structure, Plant Development and Physiology, Agronomy, and Biotechnology.

Pectins underpin the assembly, molecular architecture, and physical properties of plant cell walls and through their effects on cell growth and adhesion influence many aspects of plant development. They are some of the most dynamic components of plant cell walls, and pectin remodeling and degradation by pectin-modifying enzymes can drive developmental programming via physical effects on the cell wall and the generation of oligosaccharides that can act as signaling ligands. Here, we introduce pectin structure and synthesis and discuss pectin functions in plants.

Atomistic Insights into Elemental Two-Dimensional Materials and Their Heterostructures.

Inspired by the success of graphene, two-dimensional (2D) materials have been at the forefront of advanced (opto-)nanoelectronics and energy-related fields owing to their exotic properties like sizable bandgaps, Dirac fermions, quantum spin Hall states, topological edge states, and ballistic charge carrier transport, which hold promise for various electronic device applications. Emerging main group elemental 2D materials, beyond graphene, are of particular interest due to their unique structural characteristics, ease of synthetic exploration, and superior property tunability. In this review, we present recent advances in atomic-scale studies of elemental 2D materials with an emphasis on synthetic strategies and structural properties.

The Science of Nanostructure Acoustic Vibrations.

Ultrafast excitation of nanoparticles can excite the acoustic vibrational modes of the structure that correlate with the expansion coordinates. These modes are frequently seen in transient absorption experiments on metal nanoparticle samples and occasionally for semiconductors. The aim of this review is to give an overview of the physical chemistry of nanostructure acoustic vibrations.

Diagnosis of atrial cardiomyopathy: from the electrocardiogram to the new opportunities with multimodality imaging.

Atrial cardiomyopathy (AC) has been defined by the European Heart Rhythm Association as "Any complex of structural, architectural, contractile, or electrophysiologic changes in the atria with the potential to produce clinically relevant manifestations".1 The left atrium (LA) plays a key role in maintaining normal cardiac function; in fact atrial dysfunction has emerged as an essential determinant of outcomes in different clinical scenarios, such as valvular diseases, heart failure (HF), coronary artery disease (CAD) and atrial fibrillation (AF). A comprehensive evaluation, both anatomical and functional, is routinely performed in cardiac imaging laboratories.

Drusen Regression Following Macular Hole Surgery: A Case Report.

Purpose: To report a case of drusen regression following pars plana vitrectomy with internal limiting membrane peel (ILMP) in a patient with a full-thickness macular hole and dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Methods: A 67-year-old gentleman presented in April 2024 with a full-thickness macular hole in OS and intermediate dry AMD OU. The patient underwent pars plana vitrectomy, ILMP, and an injection of sulfur hexafluoride gas for macular hole repair in OS.

Retinal Vessels Whitening in Retinitis Pigmentosa.

Purpose: To characterize retinal vessel whitening (RVW) in Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP).

Methods: Single-center cross-sectional study. Review of clinical notes of clinically confirmed RP patients was performed followed by grading ultra-widefield imaging.

Accuracy of Intraocular Lens Power Calculation Based on Distance from Haptic to Principal Object Plane.

Purpose: To investigate the impact of the distance from the most-anterior surface of the optic to the principal object plane (POP) and from the foremost haptic to the principal object plane (H-POP) on the intraocular lens (IOL) power calculation.

Setting: A tertiary hospital.

Design: Optical simulation and retrospective cross-sectional study.

Toxic Anterior Segment Syndrome: A 2012-2022 Update on the Most Common Causes.

Purpose: To identify trends in the reporting of toxic anterior segment syndrome (TASS) to the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) TASS Force from 2012-2022.

Setting: John A. Moran Eye Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.

Functional classification of tauopathy strains reveals the role of protofilament core residues.

Distinct tau amyloid assemblies underlie diverse tauopathies but defy rapid classification. Cell and animal experiments indicate tau functions as a prion, as different strains propagated in cells cause unique, transmissible neuropathology after inoculation. Strain amplification requires compatibility of the monomer and amyloid template.

Rock strength controls erosion in tectonically dead landscapes.

Interactions among tectonics, climate, and lithology shape the Earth's surface. In regions dominated by tectonic quiescence and climate stability, the role of rock strength related to lithology, and its role in landscape evolution, can be most clearly perceived. We leverage these qualities in a unique field site by integrating topographic data, erosion rates, and a large suite of rock strength measurements to quantify the relationship between bedrock strength and erosion rates along a 200-km section of the southeast coast of Brazil where climatic and tectonic variability are minimal.

Dynamic molecular architecture of the synaptonemal complex.

During meiosis, pairing between homologous chromosomes is stabilized by the assembly of the synaptonemal complex (SC). The SC ensures the formation of crossovers between homologous chromosomes and regulates their distribution. However, how the SC regulates crossover formation remains elusive.

Significance of birth in the maintenance of quiescent neural stem cells.

Birth is one of the most important life events for animals. However, its significance in the developmental process is not fully understood. Here, we found that birth-induced alteration of glutamine metabolism in radial glia (RG), the embryonic neural stem cells (NSCs), is required for the acquisition of quiescence and long-term maintenance of postnatal NSCs.

De novo design of peptide binders to conformationally diverse targets with contrastive language modeling.

Designing binders to target undruggable proteins presents a formidable challenge in drug discovery. In this work, we provide an algorithmic framework to design short, target-binding linear peptides, requiring only the amino acid sequence of the target protein. To do this, we propose a process to generate naturalistic peptide candidates through Gaussian perturbation of the peptidic latent space of the ESM-2 protein language model and subsequently screen these novel sequences for target-selective interaction activity via a contrastive language-image pretraining (CLIP)-based contrastive learning architecture.

Microenvironment actuated CAR T cells improve solid tumor efficacy without toxicity.

A major limiting factor in the success of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for the treatment of solid tumors is targeting tumor antigens also found on normal tissues. CAR T cells against GD2 induced rapid, fatal neurotoxicity because of CAR recognition of GD2 normal mouse brain tissue. To improve the selectivity of the CAR T cell, we engineered a synthetic Notch receptor that selectively expresses the CAR upon binding to P-selectin, a cell adhesion protein overexpressed in tumor neovasculature.

WWC proteins-mediated compensatory mechanism restricts schwannomatosis driven by loss of function.

NF2-related schwannomatosis, previously known as neurofibromatosis type 2, is a genetic disorder characterized by nerve tumors due to gene mutations. Mice with deletion develop schwannomas slowly with low penetrance, hence inconvenient for preclinical studies. Here, we show that NF2, by recruiting E3 ubiquitin ligases β-TrCP1/2, promotes WWC1-3 ubiquitination and degradation.