North Carolina State University

Spatial Prediction of Tractor Noise and Detection of Atypical Sound Pressure Levels Using Machine Learning

Prolonged exposure to high sound pressure levels (SPLs) in agricultural tractors, especially when the power take-off (PTO) is engaged, poses serious health risks to operators. While machine learning has been applied in agriculture, little progress has been made in predicting SPLs...

Behavioral Changes in a Senior Dog: The Role of Pain, Anxiety, and Canine Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome

Abstract CCDS in senior dogs is often complicated by comorbid musculoskeletal pain, creating a challenging behavioral phenotype. This case involves an 8-year-old spayed female mixed-breed dog suffering from unexplained fear episodes, tail-chasing, and exercise intolerance. Primar...

Why Anthropologists Should Study Dogs

While primates have traditionally been a focus of evolutionary anthropologists, the domestic dog represents a valuable complementary model due to its long shared evolutionary history with humans. The advantages of studying dogs are particularly evident in four key areas: (1) anal...

Optimizing Pickling Cucumber ( Cucumis sativus L.) Multi‐Environment Trial Networks Using Envirotyping, Production Importance and Future Climate Projections

ABSTRACT Multi‐environment trials (METs) are essential in breeding programmes to identify high‐performing and stable genotypes across different environments. However, trial sites are often chosen based on convenience rather than representativeness, which leads to reduced relevanc...

Fast, Strong Capillary Liquid Metal Muscles

Harnessing liquid surface tension to perform mechanical work is widespread in nature and underpins many bioinspired technologies. However, fully exploiting liquid surface energy requires rapid, reversible, and wide‐range tuning of surface tension—capabilities lacking in conventio...

Quantum Corrections as a Bound for Detecting Self-Interacting Ultralight Dark Matter

We investigate the implications of interactions between ultralight dark matter (ULDM) and Standard Model fermions for the radiative stability of the ULDM potential. By matching the heavy fermion onto a low-energy scalar effective field theory, we derive the one-loop threshold cor...

Accurate and Robust Measurement of Single-Molecule Fluorescence Spectral Heterogeneity

Abstract Understanding single-molecule fluorescence spectral heterogeneity (smFLUSH) is vital for developing new probes for multidimensional super-resolution microscopy and decoding nanoscopic environments. However, traditional analysis methods distort the data and fail to distin...

Peptide Assembly Design Algorithm: A User-Friendly Computational Tool for Discovering Amyloid-forming Peptides

Abstract Rational design of self-assembling peptides that form amyloid-like structures is challenging due to the vast combinatorial sequence space for amino acids. To address this challenge, we have developed the Peptide Assembly Design (PepAD) algorithm, a Monte Carlo-based meth...

Optically Active Single Hole Spin in ZnSe

Abstract Semiconductor hole spins offer a pathway to extended coherence times by decoupling from nuclear magnetic noise, while their spin–orbit coupling enables fast all-electrical control. In ZnSe, however, realizing this potential has been limited by p-doping challenges. Here,...

Shifting climate in Caribbean tropical forests: Long-term trends at La Selva (Costa Rica) and El Verde (Puerto Rico)

Climate change is altering ecosystems worldwide, but long-term, site-level hydroclimatic responses remain comparatively under-documented in many tropical regions. We analyzed long-term air and water temperature, precipitation, and stream water level data from two active Caribbean...

Avirulence genes of Magnaporthe oryzae are a pathogen defense arsenal shaped by cognate rice resistance genes in the field

Summary We examined the frequency of and variation in eight avirulence ( AVR ) genes from 840 Magnaporthe oryzae field isolates collected from the Southern United States relative to rice resistance ( R ) genes deployed from 1959 to 2017. Little coding or noncoding variation was d...

Adaptive Influence-Based Borrowing Framework for Improving Treatment Effect Estimation in RCTs Using External Controls

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) often suffer from limited sample sizes due to high costs and lengthy recruitment periods, compromising precision in treatment effect estimation. External real-world control data offer a valuable opportunity for augmentation, but naïve integrati...

Engineering Low‐Power Cavity‐Coupled Plasmonic Nanotweezers

ABSTRACT Plasmonic nanoapertures extend optical trapping into the subwavelength regime; but quantitative design rules remain limited because trapping is often inferred from spectral responses or field enhancement alone. This work establishes a full‐field analysis framework for de...

Dislocation-induced artifacts in cyclic voltammetry of battery materials

Abstract This review establishes that crystallographic dislocations distort cyclic voltammetry in battery electrode materials, tracing that distortion from its thermodynamic origin through its diagnostic and design consequences across silicon, olivine, spinel, and layered-oxide c...

Mechanistic Investigation and Optimization of a Mixed-Oxide@Alkali Carbonate Redox Catalyst Platform for Enhanced Ethane Oxidative Dehydrogenation

Abstract Chemical looping oxidative dehydrogenation (CL-ODH) of ethane has emerged as a promising alternative for ethylene production, with the potential to mitigate the environmental and sustainability concerns associated with conventional steam cracking. The main challenge of C...

Community College Religious Accommodation Policies: A Critical Analysis in a State Context

In 2010, the North Carolina General Assembly amended state laws that required all community colleges to adopt a religious observance policy that would provide students with a minimum of two excused absences for religious activities “required by the faith of the student.” Drawing...

Natural genetic variation in rhizobia and alfalfa influence nodule shape and symbiotic performance

Abstract In many host-microbe symbioses, hosts develop specialized organs that house microbial symbionts. In legume-rhizobium symbiosis, these organs are called root nodules. While many studies have focused on host traits like plant growth, nodule number, and their structural cha...

Pheromone and morphometric features of honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens imported to Canada from around the globe

Canada imports approximately 300,000 honey bee queens annually to support the beekeeping industry, in addition to producing queens domestically during the short rearing season. Over 80% of imported queens come from the U.S., with additional contributions (~5% each) from Italy, Au...

Minimal-actuation feather star–inspired soft swimmers for multimodal 3D maneuverability

Complex, three-dimensional (3D) motions typically require actuator arrays and complex control architectures. Here, we present a feather star–inspired soft robotic swimmer that uses only two pneumatic inputs to produce three distinct and switchable swimming modes: jellyfish-like p...

Impact of PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors on patient-reported outcomes in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review of clinical trials

OBJECTIVES: Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) carries a poor prognosis and is associated with symptoms such as dysphagia that substantially impair patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The combination of chemotherapy with an immune checkpoint inhibitor is wide...