Impact of Subsequent Fellowship on Urology Chief Resident Case Log Volumes.

Objective: To characterize the impact of subsequent fellowship on the case log experience of trainees throughout their residency and specifically their chief resident year.

Materials And Methods: Urology resident case logs from 2010 to 2022 were obtained from 13 institutions for total residency and chief years. Five categorized index procedures were included for analysis: General Urology; Endourology; Reconstructive Urology; Urologic Oncology; and Pediatric Urology.

Long-term posttransplant-related bone volumetric changes in eight face transplant recipients - A single-center retrospective case series.

Background: The long-term stability of allograft or native bone in facial vascularized composite allograft (fVCA) recipients is unclear. This study quantified long-term bone volume changes in facial transplants.

Methods: Computed tomography scans of eight fVCA recipients (2011-2023) were analyzed with Materialise Mimics.

Inhibition of PDT-induced PGE2 surge for enhanced photo-immunotherapy.

Nowadays, photodynamic therapy (PDT) offers a non-invasive tumor treatment with high safety profiles and minimal side effects, implying a promising clinical application for patients with malignant tumors. However, the lack of efficacy in metastasis and recurrence still notably limits its application. To solve this problem, one promising strategy is to improve the immune response activated by PDT.

Combined UV/HO and biochar processes for enhanced removal of contaminants of emerging concern in dry wells.

Dry wells are neighborhood-scale stormwater infiltration systems increasingly used in drought-prone areas for stormwater capture and groundwater recharge. These systems bypass the low permeability surface soil to maximize infiltration rates. However, hydrophilic contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in urban runoff pose potential groundwater contamination risks.

How do restrictions on opioid prescribing, harm reduction, and treatment coverage policies relate to opioid overdose deaths in the United States in 2013-2020? An application of a new state opioid policy scale.

Background: Identifying the most effective state laws and provisions to reduce opioid overdose deaths remains critical.

Methods: Using expert ratings of opioid laws, we developed annual state scores for three domains: opioid prescribing restrictions, harm reduction, and Medicaid treatment coverage. We modeled associations of state opioid policy domain scores with opioid-involved overdose death counts in 3133 counties, and among racial/ethnic subgroups in 1485 counties (2013-2020).

Effect of siponimod on retinal thickness, a marker of neurodegeneration, in participants with SPMS: Findings from the EXPAND OCT substudy.

Background: People with MS show abnormal thinning of the retinal layers, which is associated with clinical disability and brain atrophy, and is a potential surrogate marker of neurodegeneration and treatment effects.

Objective: To evaluate the utility of retinal thickness as a surrogate marker of neurodegeneration and treatment effect in participants with secondary progressive MS (SPMS) from the optical coherence tomography (OCT) substudy of the EXPAND Phase 3 clinical trial (siponimod versus placebo).

Methods: In the OCT substudy population (n = 159), treatment effects on change in the average thickness of the retinal layer, peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL), and combined macular ganglion cell and inner plexiform layers (GCIPL) were analyzed by high-definition spectral domain OCT at months 3, 12, and 24.

Comparative outcomes of endovascular vs. surgical treatment in craniocervical junction dural arteriovenous fistulas: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Craniocervical junction dural arteriovenous fistulas (CCJ-DAVFs) are rare and complex vascular malformations that are challenging to diagnose and treat. This study aims to compare surgical and endovascular treatments for CCJ-DAVFs through a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines.

Medical loss ratio's role in the large group insurer market.

Objectives: To assess trends in the medical loss ratio (MLR) and understand how health insurance premiums in the large group market are driven by medical claims spending and insurer margins.

Study Design: Study of approximately 500 insurers covering more than 40 million lives annually in the large group market that submitted an MLR submission form (2014-2022).

Methods: We assessed trends in the MLR, premiums, medical claims spending, administrative costs, quality improvement spending, and margins among all insurers in the large group market.

Uptake of Recommended Vaccines During Pregnancy Among Publicly and Privately Insured People in the United States, December 2020-September 2022.

To estimate maternal COVID-19, influenza, and pertussis vaccine uptake during pregnancy by insurance type and identify factors characterizing those vaccinated and unvaccinated. We conducted a US cohort study of pregnant individuals (for pregnancies ending December 11, 2020-September 30, 2022) using insurance claims data. We calculated vaccination probability using Kaplan-Meier methods and identified factors associated with vaccination through binomial regression with inverse probability weights.

Ambient Air Pollution and COPD: The Multiethnic Cohort Study.

Rationale: Globally, in 2019, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was the third leading cause of death. While tobacco smoking is the predominant risk factor, the role of long-term air pollution exposure in increasing risk of COPD remains unclear. Moreover, there are few studies that have been conducted in racial and ethnic minoritized and socioeconomically diverse populations, while accounting for smoking history and other known risk factors.

Informing Planetary Protection Policies for the Future Exploration of Ceres: State of Understanding after the Dawn Mission.

We review the current state of understanding of Ceres as it relates to planetary protection policy for future landed missions, including for sample return, to the dwarf planet. The Dawn mission found Ceres to be an intriguing target for a mission, with evidence for the presence of regional, possibly extensive liquid at depth, and local expressions of recent and potentially ongoing activity. The Dawn mission also found a high abundance of carbon in the regolith, interpreted as a mix of carbonates and amorphous carbon, as well as locally high concentrations of organic matter.

Production of Organic Precursors via Meteoritic Impacts and Its Implications for Prebiotic Inventory of Early Planetary Surfaces.

Meteoritic impacts on planetary surfaces deliver a significant amount of energy that can produce prebiotic organic compounds such as cyanides, which may be a key step to the formation of biomolecules. To study the chemical processes of impact-induced organic synthesis, we simulated the physicochemical processes of hypervelocity impacts (HVI) in experiments with both high-speed C projectiles and laser ablation. In the first approach, a C beam was accelerated to collide with ammonium nitrate (NHNO) to reproduce the shock process and plume generation of meteoritic impacts on nitrogen-rich planetary surfaces.

Lysosomal dysfunction and inflammatory sterol metabolism in pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Vascular inflammation regulates endothelial pathophenotypes, particularly in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Dysregulated lysosomal activity and cholesterol metabolism activate pathogenic inflammation, but their relevance to PAH is unclear. Nuclear receptor coactivator 7 () deficiency in endothelium produced an oxysterol and bile acid signature through lysosomal dysregulation, promoting endothelial pathophenotypes.

CASTER: Direct species tree inference from whole-genome alignments.

Genomes contain mosaics of discordant evolutionary histories, challenging the accurate inference of the tree of life. While genome-wide data are routinely used for discordance-aware phylogenomic analyses, due to modeling and scalability limitations, the current practice leaves out large chunks of genomes. As more high-quality genomes become available, we urgently need discordance-aware methods to infer the tree directly from a multiple genome alignment.

Nanobody screening and machine learning guided identification of cross-variant anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing heavy-chain only antibodies.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to persist, demonstrating the risks posed by emerging infectious diseases to national security, public health, and the economy. Development of new vaccines and antibodies for emerging viral threats requires substantial resources and time, and traditional development platforms for vaccines and antibodies are often too slow to combat continuously evolving immunological escape variants, reducing their efficacy over time. Previously, we designed a next-generation synthetic humanized nanobody (Nb) phage display library and demonstrated that this library could be used to rapidly identify highly specific and potent neutralizing heavy chain-only antibodies (HCAbs) with prophylactic and therapeutic efficacy in vivo against the original SARS-CoV-2.

Passive infusion of an S2-Stem broadly neutralizing antibody protects against SARS-CoV-2 infection and lower airway inflammation in rhesus macaques.

The continued evolution of SARS-CoV-2 variants capable of subverting vaccine and infection-induced immunity suggests the advantage of a broadly protective vaccine against betacoronaviruses (β-CoVs). Recent studies have isolated monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) from SARS-CoV-2 recovered-vaccinated donors capable of neutralizing many variants of SARS-CoV-2 and other β-CoVs. Many of these mAbs target the conserved S2 stem region of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, rather than the receptor binding domain contained within S1 primarily targeted by current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

Abdominal visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue associations with postmenopausal breast cancer incidence.

Background: Obesity, classified by body mass index (BMI), is associated with higher postmenopausal breast cancer (BCa) risk. Yet, the associations between abdominal visceral (VAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) with BCa are unclear.

Methods: We assessed BCa associations with abdominal VAT and SAT in a prospective cohort of postmenopausal women without a history of cancer and with 27 years follow-up (N = 9950), during which all new cancers were adjudicated.

Orismilast, a PDE4B/D inhibitor, in moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis: Efficacy and safety from a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, phase 2b dose-ranging study (ADESOS).

Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease, characterized by eczematous skin lesions and pruritus. There is an unmet need for effective first-line systemic therapies with good safety profiles, particularly oral medications. Orismilast is a novel first-in-class oral phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) B/D inhibitor under investigation for the treatment of moderate-to-severe AD.

ZW sex chromosome differentiation in paleognathous birds is associated with mitochondrial effective population size but not mitochondrial genome size or mutation rate.

Eukaryotic genome size varies considerably, even among closely related species. The causes of this variation are unclear, but weak selection against supposedly costly "extra" genomic sequences has been central to the debate for over 50 years. The mutational hazard hypothesis, which focuses on the increased mutation rate to null alleles in superfluous sequences, is particularly influential, though challenging to test.