University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Thermal Transport in Disordered Network Metamaterial

Disordered materials occur naturally and offer a broader design space than ordered or crystalline structures. We investigate transient thermal transport in two-dimensional network metamaterials constructed from Delaunay triangulations of underlying point patterns, with varying de...

Diagnosing and Improving the Peak-to-Halo Model: A Predictive Theory of Dark Matter Halo Formation

Regions with higher matter density than their surroundings collapse into gravitationally bound structures called halos. Prof. Erickcek and other members of her research group developed the Peak-to-Halo (P2H) model, which predicts the density profiles of simulated halos using the...

Assessing the Presence of Bat Species in Restored and Degraded Southern Appalachian Wetlands

Wetlands are critical ecosystems that support a wide variety of plant and animal species. However, these habitats are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic factors including pollution, human development, and the introduction of invasive species. Restoration projects have garne...

How a Reinforcement Learning Agent learns and decides in Financial Markets

This project asked what a learning agent in financial markets should be looking at. Working with an agent that allocates across twelve funds and makes one decision each day, early experiments showed that information about how assets move together contributed more to performance t...

Quantitative Assessment of Segmentation Accuracy in Single-Source and Multisource Cone-Beam CT

Objective: Conventional single-source cone-beam CT (CBCT) is affected by x-ray scatter and cone-beam artifacts that limit quantitative structural measurements. This study compared single-source CBCT with a multisource CBCT (ms-CBCT) architecture based on a carbon nanotube x-ray s...

Obstructive sleep apnea mediates genetic risk of Diabetes Mellitus in Hispanic and Latino communities

Background: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and other sleep disorders, are associated with increased risk of developing diabetes mellitus (DM). We examined whether sleep disorders influence the genetic risk of developing diabetes in Hispanic/Latino individuals. Methods: We develop...

Risk of protein intake deficiency during treatment with GLP-1 and GIP/GLP-1 receptor agonists: considerations for secondary sarcopenia

Sarcopenia, characterized by the age-related decline in muscle mass and strength, increases the risk of falls, fractures, disability, and mortality. Type 2 diabetes and obesity frequently coexist with sarcopenia, contributing to the growing clinical challenge of sarcopenic obesit...

Allelic gene conversion softens selective sweeps

The prominence of positive selection, in which beneficial mutations are favored by natural selection and rapidly increase in frequency, is a subject of intense debate. Positive selection can result in selective sweeps, in which the haplotype(s) bearing the adaptive allele sweep t...

Morphogenesis of bacterial colonies in liquid crystalline environments

Natural bacterial habitats are often complex fluids with viscoelastic and anisotropic responses to stress; for example, they can take the form of liquid crystals (LCs), with elongated microscopic constituents that collectively align while still retaining the ability to flow. Howe...

Real-Time Symptom and Wearable Monitoring May Improve Prediction of Postoperative Recovery in Lumbar Spine Surgery Beyond Standard Measures

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Accurately identifying candidates likely to benefit from surgery and addressing modifiable preoperative risk factors are central to optimizing outcomes. Current prediction tools often rely on static clinical data and patient-reported measures, which lac...

Putting Globus Into Context: Prevalence, Characteristics, and Overlap With Other Disorders of Gut‐Brain Interaction

OBJECTIVE: Globus is characterized by the sensation of a lump in the throat without dysphagia or underlying structural abnormality or major motility disorder. Reported prevalences vary considerably across studies. Globus has been linked to both heartburn and affective disorders....

Enteric pathogens in soil adjacent to public waste bins in Maputo, Mozambique offers potential for environmental surveillance

Abstract Wastewater surveillance has been widely adopted since the COVID-19 pandemic, but non-sewered or onsite sanitation is a common form of sanitation in cities of low- and middle-income countries. Environmental surveillance in these settings requires expanding analyses beyond...

Redox‐Active SnMoS x Chalcogels for Multi‐Electron Reductive Separation of Chromate and Pertechnetate

ABSTRACT High‐valent oxyanions, such as chromate (Cr VI O 4 2− ) and pertechnetate ( 99 Tc VII O 4 − ), are highly soluble, weakly coordinating, and exceptionally stable, making their removal from water and nuclear waste extremely challenging. Here, we report a redox‐coupled meta...

MERTK inhibition cooperates with immunomodulatory cyclophosphamide to induce CXCL9⁺ monocyte-macrophage programming and durable antitumor immunity in triple negative breast cancer

ABSTRACT Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has high rates of recurrence despite chemotherapy and immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) can either suppress or support anti-tumor immunity, but the mechanisms governing these states and therapeutic...

Therapeutic Reversalof PH-HFpEF via Lung SpheroidCell Exosomes

Abstract Pulmonary hypertension–associated heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (PH-HFpEF) is a prevalent and lethal cardiopulmonary syndrome without effective disease-modifying therapy. We investigated the therapeutic potential of lung spheroid cell–derived exosomes (L...

MatUQ: a benchmark for uncertainty-aware out-of-distribution materials property prediction with graph neural networks

Abstract Reliable uncertainty quantification (UQ) for graph neural networks (GNNs) under out-of-distribution (OOD) shifts remains insufficiently characterized in materials discovery. Existing benchmarks based on random splits can overestimate model reliability by underrepresentin...

Hospital Capacity Pooling in Pandemics: Simulation‐Based Mortality Impacts and Diversification Mechanisms

Elevated healthcare strain during the COVID-19 pandemic increased patient mortality rates and prompted costly non-pharmaceutical interventions. This work examines how the size of a hospital's service population, which can be expanded by linking hospitals through patient transfer...

Patient-centered approaches in psoriasis management: lessons from the past and future directions

INTRODUCTION: Psoriasis is a chronic immune-mediated disease with physical and psychosocial burden that is not fully captured by measures of skin lesion characteristics. Advances in therapies, including multiple biologic treatments, have improved disease control, but gaps remain...

The hematology workforce in the United States: past, present, and strategies for the future

From 2017-2021, the American Society of Hematology (ASH) completed the largest study ever conducted of the hematology workforce in the United States (US). The study highlighted a deficit in the classical hematology (CH) workforce: despite very high CH clinical volumes encountered...

Integrating mental health support into care for placenta accreta spectrum: a qualitative analysis of patient perspectives

Abstract Background Patients with high-risk pregnancies due to placenta accreta spectrum (PAS) are at high risk of morbidity and mortality, which may increase risk for childbirth related mental health sequelae including postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma...