The Future of HIV: Challenges in meeting the 2030 reduction goal.

Objectives: To predict the burden of HIV in the United States (US) nationally and by region, transmission type, and race/ethnicity through 2030.

Methods: Using publicly available data from the CDC NCHHSTP dashboard, we generated 11-year prospective forecasts of incident HIV diagnoses nationally and by region (South, non-South), race/ethnicity (White, Hispanic/Latino, Black/African American), and transmission type (Injection-Drug Use, Male-to-Male Sexual Contact (MMSC), and Heterosexual Contact (HSC)). We employed weighted (W) and unweighted (UW) -sub-epidemic ensemble models, calibrated using 12 years of historical data (2008-2019), and forecasted trends for 2020-2030.

Evaluating the association of genotype and cognitive resilience in SuperAgers.

Importance: "SuperAgers" are oldest-old adults (ages 80+) whose memory performance resembles that of adults in their 50s to mid-60s. Factors underlying their exemplary memory are underexplored in large, racially diverse cohorts.

Objective: To determine the frequency of genotypes in non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White SuperAgers compared to middle-aged (ages 50-64), old (ages 65-79), and oldest-old (ages 80+) controls and Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia cases.

"Smoking weed it gets you over the hump": Cannabis co-use as a facilitator of decreased opioid use among people who inject drugs in Los Angeles, California.

Introduction: Opioid overdose mortality rates have surged dramatically in the last decade due largely to fentanyl in the illicit US drug supply. As of June 2024, 38 states, three territories, namely US Virgin Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, and the District of Columbia, allow the medical use of cannabis products. However, there remains limited qualitative community-based evidence on the role of cannabis co-use among opioid using and injecting populations.

Lipid Packing Defects are Necessary and Sufficient for Membrane Binding of α-Synuclein.

α-Synuclein (αSyn), an intrinsically disordered protein implicated in Parkinson's disease, is potentially thought to initiate aggregation through binding to cellular membranes. Previous studies have suggested that anionic membrane charge is necessary for this binding. However, these studies largely focus on unmodified αSyn, while nearly all αSyn in the body is N-terminally acetylated (NTA).

Reducing Requirements for Insulin Pump Referral Improves Pump Initiation for Publicly Insured Children and Youth With Type 1 Diabetes.

Quality Improvement Success Stories are published by the American Diabetes Association in collaboration with the American College of Physicians and the National Diabetes Education Program. This series is intended to highlight best practices and strategies from programs and clinics that have successfully improved the quality of care for people with diabetes or related conditions. Each article in the series is reviewed and follows a standard format developed by the editors of .

Targeting ROR2 homooligomerization disrupts ROR2-dependent signaling and suppresses stem-like cell properties of human breast adenocarcinoma.

Breast cancer stem-like cells (CSCs) are enriched following treatment with chemotherapy, and posited as having a high level of plasticity and enhanced tumor-initiation capacity, which can enable cancer relapse. Here, we show that such features are shared by breast cancer (BCA) cells that express receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor (ROR2), which is expressed primarily during embryogenesis and by various cancers. We find that Wnt5a can induce ROR2 homooligomerization to activate noncanonical Wnt signaling and enhance tumor-initiation capacity of BCA cells.

Scalable Spray-On Fabrication Approach for Voltage-Tunable Thermal Emissivity Surfaces.

We report a new approach for fabricating gate-tunable thermal emissivity surfaces by spraying them on graphene ink. The devices consist of a multilayer graphene (MLG)/porous alumina membrane/gold stack, in which the MLG is deposited by spraying the graphene ink onto the porous membrane using an airbrush. The graphene ink consists of μm-sized flakes of MLG suspended in a solution of polyvinylpyrrolidone and ethylene glycol.

Assessing Metabolic Ageing via DNA Methylation Surrogate Markers: A Multicohort Study in Britain, Ireland and the USA.

Metabolomics and epigenomics have been used to develop 'ageing clocks' that assess biological age and identify 'accelerated ageing'. While metabolites are subject to short-term variation, DNA methylation (DNAm) may capture longer-term metabolic changes. We aimed to develop a hybrid DNAm-metabolic clock using DNAm as metabolite surrogates ('DNAm-metabolites') for age prediction.

Bridging Needs and Expectations of Individuals With Physical Disabilities and Community Services Stakeholders for the Cocreation of an Adapted Physical Activity Platform in Virtual Reality: Qualitative Study.

Background: Physical activity supports the health and well-being of individuals with physical disabilities. Despite the significance of engaging in physical activity, barriers faced by individuals with disabilities, such as limited access to adapted facilities and lack of transportation, can restrict their participation. Community organizations play a role in addressing these challenges, but virtual reality (VR) also offers a way to diversify adapted activities.

Novel CO loaded nanoparticle ultrasound-activated contrast agent: A potential urinary catheter-free modality to detect vesicoureteral reflux.

Background: The current gold-standard for detecting vesicoureteral reflux (VUR) is the voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG). However, VCUGs require ionizing radiation and bladder catheterization that can be challenging to perform and traumatic for pediatric patients and their parents.

Objective: To investigate the feasibility of a novel urinary catheter-free modality for diagnosing VUR using in vitro and ex vivo models.

Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, reduced hippocampal subfield volumes, and word reading.

Reading difficulties and exposure to air pollution are both disproportionately high among youth living in economically disadvantaged contexts. Critically, variance in reading skills in youth living in higher socioeconomic status (SES) contexts largely derives from genetic factors, whereas environmental factors explain more of the variance in reading skills among youth living in lower SES contexts. Although reading research has focused closely on the psychosocial environment, little focus has been paid to the effects of the chemical environment.

Comparison of Postoperative Antibiotic Protocols for Pediatric Complicated Appendicitis: A Western Pediatric Surgery Research Consortium Study.

Background: There is no consensus on the appropriate duration of postoperative antibiotics for complicated appendicitis in children. Commonly used antibiotic endpoints include normalization of white blood cell count (WBC) or completion of a minimum number of prespecified treatment days. We compared clinical outcomes resulting from varying postoperative antibiotic protocols for complicated appendicitis in children.

Southern California ozone exposure disparities under different emissions control strategies in a low-carbon future.

Environmental justice (EJ) has emerged as a critical consideration when planning new air pollution control strategies. In this study we analyze how traditional ozone (O) control strategies for the year 2050 will affect exposure disparities, defined as departures from the population average exposure, for O and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in Southern California. Future air quality fields were simulated using a chemical transport model under five emission scenarios that explore a range of traditional controls that target the largest sources of precursor emissions using a novel O source apportionment technique but without considering exposure disparities.

Substrate stiffness dictates unique doxorubicin-induced senescence-associated secretory phenotypes and transcriptomic signatures in human pulmonary fibroblasts.

Cells are subjected to dynamic mechanical environments which impart forces and induce cellular responses. In age-related conditions like pulmonary fibrosis, there is both an increase in tissue stiffness and an accumulation of senescent cells. While senescent cells produce a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), the impact of physical stimuli on both cellular senescence and the SASP is not well understood.

Living in Historically Redlined Neighborhoods and the Cognitive Function of Black and White Adults.

Objectives: We determined if living in historically redlined neighborhoods was associated with level and change in cognitive functioning and if this association differed for Black and White older adults.

Methods: We linked the Health and Retirement Study 1998-2018 data to redlining scores from the Historic Redlining Indicator data. Our sample included adults aged 50 years and older (24,230 respondents, 129,618 person-period observations).

Seascape Genomics of Red Abalone: Limited Range-Wide Population Structure and Evidence for Local Adaptation.

Characterising patterns of genetic diversity including evidence of local adaptation is relevant for predicting and managing species recovering from overexploitation in the face of climate change. Red abalone (Haliotis rufescens) is a species of conservation concern due to recent declines from overharvesting, disease and climate change, resulting in the closure of commercial and recreational fisheries. Using whole-genome resequencing data from 23 populations spanning their entire range (southern Oregon, USA, to Baja California, MEX) we investigated patterns of population connectivity and genotype-environment associations that would reveal local adaptation across the mosaic of coastal environments that define the California Current System (CCS).

Loss of O6-Methylguanine-DNA Methyltransferase Protein Expression by Immunohistochemistry Is Associated With Response to Capecitabine and Temozolomide in Neuroendocrine Neoplasms.

Background: A recent prospective phase II study (ECOG-ACRIN E2211) demonstrated that MGMT deficiency was associated with a significant response to capecitabine and temozolomide (CAPTEM) in pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs); however, routine MGMT analysis in NENs was not recommended. Our study sought to demonstrate whether loss of MGMT protein expression is associated with improved overall survival (OS) in patients receiving CAPTEM for NENs from various tumor sites.

Materials And Methods: Paraffin-embedded tumor samples were evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) using an MGMT monoclonal antibody.

Head-to-Head Comparison Between Phosphatidylethanol Versus Indirect Alcohol Biomarkers for Diagnosis of MetALD Versus MASLD: A Prospective Study.

Background: The current subclassification of steatotic liver disease (SLD) relies on validated questionnaires, such as Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and Lifetime Drinking History (LDH), which, while useful, are impractical and lack precision for their use in routine clinical practice. Phosphatidylethanol (PEth) is a quantitative, objective alcohol biomarker with high sensitivity and specificity.

Aims: To assess the diagnostic accuracy of PEth for differentiating metabolic dysfunction and alcohol-associated liver disease (MetALD) from metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in a large, population-based, prospective, multiethnic cohort of individuals with overweight or obesity.

Neurobehavioral plasticity in the rodent gustatory system induced by regular consumption of a low-calorie sweetener during adolescence.

Habitual consumption of low-calorie sweeteners (LCS) during juvenile-adolescence can lead to greater sugar intake later in life. Here, we investigated if exposure to the LCS Acesulfame Potassium (Ace-K) during this critical period of development reprograms the taste system in a way that would alter hedonic responding for common dietary compounds. Results revealed that early-life LCS intake not only enhanced the avidity for a caloric sugar (fructose) when rats were in a state of caloric need, it increased acceptance of a bitterant (quinine) in Ace-K-exposed rats tested when middle-aged.

Decoding the mA epitranscriptomic landscape for biotechnological applications using a direct RNA sequencing approach.

Epitranscriptomic modifications, particularly N6-methyladenosine (mA), are crucial regulators of gene expression, influencing processes such as RNA stability, splicing, and translation. Traditional computational methods for detecting mA from Nanopore direct RNA sequencing (DRS) data are constrained by their reliance on experimentally validated labels, often resulting in the underestimation of modification sites. Here, we introduce pum6a, an innovative attention-based framework that integrates positive and unlabeled multi-instance learning (MIL) to address the challenges of incomplete labeling and missing read-level annotations.

Microplastic pollution in the water column and benthic sediment of the San Pedro Bay, California, USA.

The concentration, character, and distribution of microplastics in coastal marine environments remain poorly understood, with most research focusing on the abundance of microplastics at the sea surface. To address this gap, we conducted one of the first comprehensive assessments of microplastic distribution through the marine water column and benthic sediment during the wet and dry season in the coastal waters of the San Pedro Bay Southern California, USA. Microplastic concentrations in the water column did not vary significantly across season but were significantly higher in nearshore environments and at the surface of the water column.