Boston University

Elevated translocator protein in skull bone marrow is linked to human chronic pain

The skull bone marrow (SBM) is emerging as a critical hub for neuroimmune signaling, yet its role in chronic pain is unknown. Using integrated positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging, here, we show that the levels of 18-kilodalton translocator protein (TSPO), a pu...

Post‐traumatic Psychopathology and Cardiovascular Risk: A Danish Case–Control Study of Sex‐Specific Associations

Background There is increasing recognition that trauma exposure and related psychiatric consequences predict cardiovascular disease risk. However, most research has specifically examined post‐traumatic stress disorder—despite evidence that a range of psychiatric disorders may fol...

Unacknowledged Burdens and Clinical Assets of BIPOC Genetic Counseling Students: Qualitative Evidence to Inform Supervision

As the genetic counseling profession works to diversify its predominantly white workforce, understanding the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students is central to equity efforts. While BIPOC students bring invaluable cultural and linguistic diversit...

Veterans' Urgent Care Use and Subsequent Utilization in the Community

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of Veterans' urgent care use in non-Veterans Health Administration (VHA) clinics on their later use of specialty and emergency care. STUDY SETTING AND DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study analyzing urgent care, specialty care, and emergency depar...

Enhancing Bone Marrow Lesion Segmentation Through Dual-Channel Deep Neural Networks and Test-Time Augmentation

Bone marrow lesion (BML) volume is an essential biomarker for understanding knee osteoarthritis (KOA). However, automatic BML segmentation remains challenging due to the irregular shapes and indistinct boundaries of these lesions in knee magnetic resonance images (MRI). To improv...

Workload and Perceived Burden From a National Survey of Surgeons

Importance Surgeon workload is substantial, but data characterizing perceived burden are scarce, limiting workforce planning, surgeon well-being, and patient safety. Objective To characterize surgeon workload and factors associated with perceived burden. Design, Setting, and Part...

The Paradox of Tau and RNA-Binding Proteins: How Adaptive Stress Granule Regulation Becomes Pathological with Aging

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are a large class of proteins that form biological condensates to facilitate their functions. Chronic stress, such as occurs in neurodegenerative diseases, stimulates persistent accumulation of particular RBP condensates as part of the translational st...

Distinct Patterns of Intentional and Unintentional Overdose Among Psychiatric Patients With Bipolar and Substance Use Disorders.

BACKGROUND: Co-occurrence of Bipolar Disorder (BD) and Substance Use Disorder (SUD) increases the risk of negative mental health outcomes, including both intentional (i.e., suicide self-poisoning) and unintentional overdose (i.e., accidental). While it is clear that both forms of...

Functional fractionation of large-scale brain networks in the human subcortex

Brain network mapping plays a crucial role in advancing our understanding of human brain organization and the neuroanatomic foundations of cognition. Historically, the identification of large-scale brain networks has focused on the cerebral cortex. Some cortical networks have bee...

Reframing HRM for a multipolar world: insights from the Asia-Pacific region

Purpose The purpose of this anthology is to critically evaluate the role of human resource management in International Business within an increasingly multipolar, digitally disrupted and institutionally diverse global environment. By bringing together leading scholars, the collec...

Screen time is differentially related to visual selective attention and visual feature processing across middle childhood

Abstract Increased screen time has been linked to attention difficulties in early childhood, raising concerns among parents and professionals. However, it remains unclear how screen use influences the development of visual attention and visual processing across childhood. In this...

PrEP reinitiation, uptake, and persistence as targets for reducing HIV incidence and racial and ethnic inequities among men who have sex with men in Boston, USA: a network modeling study

Background A decade of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has lowered HIV incidence among men who have sex with men (MSM) but not enough to meet Ending the HIV Epidemic goals, and racial and ethnic disparities persist. The PrEP era has produced a population of former users facing lo...

Distributionally robust optimization for credible learning in predictive health applications

Data-driven predictive models are increasingly used in clinical settings, but adoption hinges on both interpretability and credibility —i.e., alignment with domain knowledge. For tabular electronic health records data, conventional deep models are hard to interpret, while sparse...

LATS1/2 inactivation drives a distinct venous endothelial cell response that contributes to fibrotic remodeling of the lung

Endothelial dysfunction is recognized to contribute to chronic tissue remodeling in the lung, yet endothelial-derived mechanisms driving these processes remain largely undefined. Here, we show that endothelial inactivation of the LATS1 and LATS2 kinases, key suppressors of the tr...

Improving Primary Healthcare: Applying Grapevine (Vitis vinifera) Principles to Lebanon’s Vision 2030

Background/Objectives: While Lebanon’s Vision 2030 prioritizes strengthening Lebanon’s chronically constrained, fragmented, and shocked primary healthcare system, implementation is hindered by weak sensing mechanisms, misaligned spatial distribution, and poorly integrated referra...

From AI Intuition to AI Literacy: A Dual Framework for K-12 Education

AI literacy has become a central framework for guiding the integration of artificial intelligence in K-12 education, emphasizing conceptual understanding, practical application, critical evaluation, and ethical judgment. These competencies are essential for supporting informed an...

Transcriptome signatures associated with cognitively unimpaired individuals with pathologically confirmed Alzheimer disease

There is growing interest in cognitive resilience to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), given limited success of therapies targeting hallmark proteins. Gene expression in the prefrontal cortex region obtained from brain donors in three cohorts was compared among pathological controls and...

Association of prenatal exposure to opioids, cannabis, and polysubstance use with cord blood DNA methylation patterns in a multiancestry cohort

Abstract Background: Blood DNA methylation patterns are highly predictive of prenatal exposure to smoking and differential methylation has been associated with maternal alcohol use. We extended this to determine whether DNA methylation patterns in cord blood are associated with p...

Full-covariance chemical Langevin predator–prey diffusion with absorbing boundaries

Abstract Many stochastic predator–prey models introduce independent diagonal noise at the stochastic level. Such formulations are useful phenomenological models, but they do not explicitly encode the event-level coupling created by predation and biomass conversion. We derive an a...

Algae-specific immune modulation influences responses to heat and pathogen challenge in a symbiotic coral

ABSTRACT The role of symbiotic algae in coral life history and host health is well documented, but the immune and physiological trade-offs of hosting these symbionts remain less explored. While association with the algal symbionts of the genus Durusdinium is known to confer therm...