University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Prevalence of laryngopharyngeal reflux symptoms in divers

Introduction: Laryngopharyngeal symptoms (LPS) refer to aerodigestive complaints that may result from the retrograde flow of gastric contents into the upper aerodigestive tract. These symptoms may be under-recognised in populations exposed to mechanical or environmental stressors...

Melding Structured Care With Improvisation—Jazz in Medicine

This Viewpoint draws parallels from the improvisation within structure of jazz music and explains how to harmonize the use of structured pathways with the need to improvise in patient care.

High-grade astrocytoma with piloid features: a clinical and genomic analysis of prognostic factors using a large cohort

BACKGROUND: High-grade astrocytoma with piloid features (HGAP) is a recently defined tumor type that is not well-understood. Prognostic factors of clinical outcomes are not well-established. METHODS: Methylation profiling was performed on tumor samples, many at the National Cance...

Iron, Tuberculosis, and Particle-Related Exposures Including Smoking

The availability of iron controls the abundance and diversity of life. Microbial pathways for iron acquisition account for their replication and virulence. The balance of interactions defining a microbial community can be altered by environmental stress. Decreased iron availabili...

Peptide Fingerprinting of Single Protein Molecules Using In‐Plane Nanopore Sensors Integrated to an Extended Immobilized Nanoscale Enzymatic Reactor (eINER)

ABSTRACT We report a thermoplastic nanofluidic device that combines an extended immobilized nanoscale enzymatic reactor (eINER) with a dual in‐plane nanopore time‐of‐flight (DNP‐ToF) reader for label‐free peptide fingerprinting of single protein molecules. As opposed to tradition...

Factors associated with paediatric ward abscondment in four district hospitals in Malawi

Abscondment from hospital poses risks to patients. The epidemiology of abscondment from hospitals remains unclear in Malawi and other sub-Saharan African settings. This case-control study used data from a hospital surveillance of the Malaria Vaccine Implementation Program in four...

Landscape of approaches for streamlining pre-analytical and early analytical variables for solid tumor next-generation sequencing: A Genomics Organization for Academic Laboratories consortium report

The scope of pre-analytical and early analytical methods used in clinical molecular laboratories can have vast effects on the quality and turnaround time for solid tumor next-generation sequencing assays. To learn more about various approaches, a survey of 24 academic laboratorie...

Rethinking family planning indicators: findings from a global expert consultation

The global family planning field has long relied on a few standard measures to assess program effectiveness and population-level outcomes, such as modern contraceptive prevalence, unmet need for family planning, and demand satisfied. Recognizing that these measures have substanti...

Pre-Diagnostic Plasma Endogenous Steroids and the Risk of Exfoliation Glaucoma

Purpose: Exfoliation glaucoma (XFG) is the most common secondary glaucoma. Prior studies suggest a higher incidence in women and links to reproductive history, implying estrogen-related pathways. Metabolomic data also indicated inverse associations with steroid-related plasma met...

The cell biology and genome of Stentor pyriformis, a giant cell that embeds symbiotic algae in a microtubule meshwork.

Endosymbiotic events in which an endosymbiont is retained within a cell that remains capable of phagocytosis, a situation known as mixotrophy, provide potentially important clues about the eukaryotic evolution. Here we describe the cell biology and genome of the giant mixotrophic...

Where the Growth Happens: A Qualitative Case Study of Preparation for Equity Work in One Principal Preparation Program

As public schools in the United States grow increasingly diverse, the need for equity-focused school leadership has become more pressing. This study examines the design and implementation of one equity-focused principal preparation program. Using a qualitative single case study d...

Modeling Ultrafine Particles Near a Large, Commercial Airport Using High-Fidelity Aircraft Emission Inventories and Aircraft-Specific Aerosol Size Distribution with CMAQ

Abstract Aircraft are an important source of ultrafine particles (UFPs) near airports, yet their contributions remain poorly quantified in chemical transport models. We addressed limitations by integrating high-fidelity aircraft emissions inventories (AEIs) generated by the Aviat...

The plausible relationship between deep long-period earthquakes and volatiles: a case study of the Alaska-Aleutian arc

Abstract Deep long-period (DLP) earthquakes are observed beneath volcanoes in various tectonic settings during background activity, unrest, and eruption. The exact processes generating DLPs have been subject to ongoing debate, as they may provide insight into deep magmatic plumbi...

Vaccine-Associated Enhanced Respiratory Disease: From Animal Models to Human Health

Vaccines are a safe and highly effective tool for protecting both humans and animals against infectious diseases. Although vaccines currently in use in humans have robust safety records, historical examples show that some vaccines have resulted in adverse outcomes, including vacc...

Zebrafish larvae swim bladder serves as a model to study Mycobacterium abscessus infection kinetics, host–pathogen interactions and drug efficacy

Mycobacterium abscessus , a nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM), is a cause of chronic lung infection primarily affecting people with underlying conditions such as cystic fibrosis and other causes of bronchiectasis. Mostly caudal vein infection of zebrafish embryos has been used f...

Moderators of the Effects of Telehealth Mindfulness-based Interventions for Chronic Pain

OBJECTIVES: Little is known about who benefits most from Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs), and whether certain groups differentially benefit from different types of MBI formats (group-based versus non-group based). The present study uses data from a three-arm randomized con...

Nearly-minimax variance estimation under rough random design

We identify the minimax exponent for constant conditional variance estimation under rough random design. The unknown design density is bounded above and away from zero, with no smoothness assumption, and the conditional error laws may depend on the covariates and have uniformly b...

A Disease-Guided Representative Gene Selection Framework for High-Dimensional Gene Expression Analysis

Gene expression datasets provide valuable information for disease classification and biomarker discovery; however, their high dimensionality and limited sample size may limit classification performance and reduce biological interpretability. This study proposes GeDiRep, a prior k...

SORDINO: silent, sensitive, specific and artifact-resistant fMRI in awake, behaving mice

Blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has advanced brain mapping across species. This widely used technique, however, faces challenges such as acoustic noise, electromagnetic interference, motion artifacts, magnetic-field inhomogene...

Complex non-falciparum transmission and widespread insecticide resistance sustain hyperendemic malaria in Penka-Michel, a focus of the Cameroon highlands

A 12-month longitudinal entomological study (September 2023-August 2024) in the Western Highlands of Cameroon (Penka-Michel) investigated malaria transmission dynamics and insecticide resistance markers, including target-site resistance (L1014F, N1575Y, G119S- Ace1 ) and metaboli...