University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Expansion of Freshwater Harmful Cyanobacteria in Brackish Waters: Salt Stress Responses, Toxigenic Dynamics, and Ecological Risks along the Freshwater-to-Marine Continuum

Abstract In recent years, freshwater harmful cyanobacterial blooms (CyanoHABs) and their associated cyanotoxins have been increasingly detected in estuaries and coastal lagoons, indicating that some freshwater taxa can survive in low-to-moderate salinity and may maintain their to...

Chromatin stability safeguards mitochondrial homeostasis and restrains TORC1 signaling

Chromatin is dynamically regulated in response to nutrient flux to promote the transcriptional changes needed for adaptation. The mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (yeast TORC1) kinase integrates nutrient signaling with chromatin regulation, yet whether chromatin signals...

Is There a Relationship Between the Gut Microbiome and the Functional Capabilities of Skeletal Muscle? A Narrative Review

Diet is one of the primary determinants of gut microbiota composition and its metabolic output. That output is emerging as a critical determinant of systemic health and has been linked to most physiological systems in the body, yet its relationship to skeletal muscle physiology h...

Validation of the International Working Group 2023 response criteria for higher risk myelodysplastic syndromes/neoplasms using the International Consortium for Myelodysplastic Syndromes VALIDATE database and a randomized phase III trial

Response assessment criteria in patients with higher-risk myelodysplastic syndromes/neoplasms (HR-MDS) have been updated in the 2023 International Working Group (IWG) criteria. However, validation of these criteria has been limited to date. We analyzed overall survival (OS) by be...

Experiences with the Department of Housing and Urban Development smoke-free air policy in North Carolina

Introduction To combat high rates of tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) implemented a smoke-free air policy. The present study examined residents’ experiences with the smoke-free air policy in two metropolitan counties...

Self-starter or sidekick? Independent and spillover effects of Opportunity Zones on housing supply in cities

The Opportunity Zone (OZ) program, created under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, offers capital gains tax incentives to encourage investment in low-income communities. While proponents argue the program catalyzes new development, critics contend it may subsidize projects that wou...

How Heat Stress Mediates the Impacts of Street-level Environmental Features on Housing Prices: A Comparative Study of Center City and Outside Areas in Philadelphia

Urban heat increasingly shapes housing markets, but existing studies often use coarse data and overlook spatial differences. This study develops an SEM-centered framework, with RF-SHAP as a non-parametric robustness check, to examine how 1-meter Universal Thermal Climate Index (U...

A Structured Framework for Translation of the ACNS Standardized Critical Care EEG Terminology Into Spanish

Purpose: The American Clinical Neurophysiology Society (ACNS) Critical Care EEG Terminology provides standardized language for describing electroencephalographic (EEG) patterns in critically ill patients but has not been formally translated into Spanish. We aimed to develop a con...

Intra-individual variability of urinary non-persistent chemical concentrations during pregnancy in the ECHO Cohort

Studies of prenatal exposure to non-persistent chemicals often assume biomarker measurements from a single urine sample can represent exposure pregnancy. The validity of this assumption depends on biomarker concentration variability across gestation, which is not well-characteriz...

FramePoison: attacks on medical RAG that target framing, not just facts

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is increasingly used in high-stakes domains like medicine, where answers are grounded in retrieved literature and can shape clinical understanding. This opens a new attack surface: an adversary can shape model outputs by injecting a few docume...

The chromatin-organizer Satb1 modulates regulatory T cell activity within the tumor microenvironment

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are essential for maintaining immune homeostasis and preventing autoimmune diseases, but are also a major cellular constituent of the tumor microenvironment (TME) that facilitates cancer progression. Identifying differences in Treg subtypes to specifica...

Contraception requirements in clinical HIV research: a qualitative analysis of adolescent perspectives from Malawi and Botswana

Abstract Background Clinical HIV research involving investigational or newly approved medications requires women of childbearing potential to use two forms of contraception to minimize fetal risk. These requirements also apply to adolescents who can become pregnant, yet ethical a...

The HEADSpAcE Data Center: An international data and biospecimen resource for head and neck cancer translational research

Head and neck cancer (HNC) comprises a heterogeneous group of malignancies with substantial variation in incidence, risk factors, and outcomes across populations. Existing studies are often limited by regional scope or lack integration of epidemiological, clinical, and molecular...

Impact of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status on Presentation and Treatment of Thyroid Cancer

Abstract Objective We examined associations between multilevel sociodemographic factors and extent of disease at presentation and time to treatment in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC). Study Design Population‐based study. Setting California Cancer Registry (CCR)....

Do Children Who Develop Faster Go on to Age Faster in Midlife?

We quantified the association between rate of child development and pace of midlife aging in the Dunedin Study and the Add Health Study. Physical development was quantified in Dunedin participants ( N = 1,037; age 45) using a composite comprised of (1) birth weight for gestationa...

Development of NanoBRET Cellular Target Engagement Assays in Primary Neurons for Activating Mutants of p21-Activated Kinase 1

Abstract The p21-activated kinases (PAKs) are a group of serine-threonine kinases central to multiple signaling pathways that govern cell survival and proliferation. Aberrant activity of PAK1, the most well characterized member of the PAK family, drives progression of several mal...

Selection and screening in cyber insurance markets

Abstract This paper studies how information frictions shape demand, screening, and contract design in the U.S. cyber insurance market. I develop a framework in which firms sort into coverage based on latent cyber risk while insurers screen using coarse signals and manage residual...

Draft genome sequences of two Vibrio jasicida strains isolated from the Atlantic brief squid Lolliguncula brevis

ABSTRACT We report draft genome sequences of two Vibrio jasicida strains, LB10LO4 and LB14LO7, cultured from tissues of the Atlantic brief squid Lolliguncula brevis in Bogue Sound, North Carolina, USA.

Clinical Trial: Dupilumab Improves Eosinophilic Oesophagitis Outcomes Versus Placebo Regardless of Comorbidities or Treatment History in a Randomised Clinical Trial

BACKGROUND: Patients with eosinophilic oesophagitis (EoE) can present with differing disease characteristics, treatment resistance, and associated type 2 inflammatory comorbidities. We assessed the efficacy of dupilumab in subgroups of patients with EoE from the LIBERTY EoE TREET...

SPIRIT-CONSORT-ELM: element-level annotated dataset and large language model approach for assessing randomized controlled trial reporting

Abstract Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are central to assessing the benefits and harms of interventions, but incomplete reporting undermines their verifiability and usefulness. Although SPIRIT and CONSORT reporting guidelines promote complete reporting of RCT protocols and...