University of Pittsburgh

Functionally active lymphoid aggregates correlate with improved prognosis in brain metastases

Abstract B cells and their cellular neighborhoods, i.e., lymphoid aggregates (LAs) and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS), have not been extensively studied in melanoma brain metastases (BM) or lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) BM, despite their prognostic value and role in immunotherap...

Gruesome predictions

I explain basic problems of inductive reasoning from a Bayesian point of view. To make probabilistic predictions, we need to start with a prior, but which prior should we choose? I discuss some natural options and the problems they face, with particular attention to 'gruesome' al...

The Hidden Metabolic Vulnerability in HDL Cholesterol in an Afro-Caribbean Type 2 Diabetes Population Less Vulnerable to Heart Disease

The tendency to develop insulin resistance and dyslipidemia varies between black Africans, white Europeans, and Amerindian racial groups. Genetic admixture of these three racial groups has resulted in hybrid populations of Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks. The current study was...

Educational approaches to the relationship between cervical adjusting and risk of cervical artery dissection; a survey of chiropractic faculty

Abstract Background Cervical artery dissection (CeAD) remains a rare but clinically important condition that has generated longstanding debate regarding its potential association with cervical spinal manipulative therapy (cSMT). Although biomechanical and epidemiologic studies ha...

Rapidly evolving aphid gall effector proteins exhibit saposin-like folds

Abstract Many insects manipulate plants by injecting effector proteins. In one extreme example of this molecular “hijacking”, Hormaphis cornu aphids inject bicycle proteins into Hamamelis virginiana , contributing to the development of novel organs called galls. Bicycle proteins...

Molecular basis of nick ligation in the nucleosome by DNA Ligase IIIα

Eukaryotic genomic DNA is packaged into chromatin through a fundamental repeating unit known as the nucleosome core particle. Within this chromatin context, genomic DNA is constantly exposed to endogenous and exogenous stress that result in the formation of DNA damage, which must...

Blood-based biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration in an indigenous African cohort using both Simoa and NULISA platforms

Background: In low- and middle-income countries, Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) constitute a growing public health burden. Indeed, the lack of awareness and easy screening tools, such as blood-based biomarkers, leaves many patients undiagnosed. In this study, we...

Tiny Messengers, Actionable Targets: sEV-Driven Epigenetic Changes in Cancer

Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are pivotal mediators of intercellular epigenetic communication in cancer. Following MISEV2023, we use the size- and isolation-based term sEV throughout, because most primary studies cited here cannot resolve which biogenetic route generated th...

Anatomical white matter tracts span the cortical hierarchy to support cognitive diversity

Long-range white matter (WM) tracts support cognition by enabling communication between distant cortical regions, which are organized along a hierarchy defined by the sensorimotor-to-association (S-A) axis. However, it remains unknown how WM tracts are positioned within the corti...

Primary BPH Stromal Cell Cultures Exhibit Heightened Androgen‐Responsiveness

ABSTRACT Background Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is the most common disease in aging males. BPH growth is androgen‐dependent, and it appears that androgens preferentially stimulate the growth of BPH as compared to normal prostate. The mechanism of preferential androgen stim...

A uniform sub-three-fifths bound for exceptional abc triples

GPT 5.6 Sol discovered the result and proof presented in this paper. We establish a new uniform upper bound for the number of exceptional abc triples throughout the full subcritical range. The proof combines an anatomic decomposition with Fourier analysis, geometry-of-numbers est...

High-grade serous ovarian cancer is associated with increased TP53 mutation burden in uterine lavage

High grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) has low survival partly due to the lack of methods for detection, diagnosis, and risk prediction. TP53 mutations, which drive HGSC, are found in gynecological tissues as the result of somatic evolution, but it is unknown whether an excess o...

Northern Boundary of Gondwana Inferred From Geochemical Characteristics of Granites East of the Eastern Syntaxis

Abstract The Bangong–Nujiang Meso-Tethyan Suture in eastern Tibet is still difficult to trace, mainly because Cenozoic shortening has juxtaposed narrow terranes, basins, and suture-related mélanges. We present field observations, zircon U-Pb ages, Lu-Hf isotopes, and whole-rock g...

Multimethod examination of change in autistic preschoolers' emotion dysregulation in the context of parenting stress intervention

Background Many autistic preschoolers experience heightened emotion dysregulation and rely heavily on parents for co‐regulatory support, which may be compromised by elevated parenting stress. Methods We examined secondary outcomes of a randomized trial (ClinicalTrials.gov – NCT03...

Structural drivers of exhumation in compressional orogens: examples from western Nepal

Abstract. The magnitude and location of vertical uplift in fold-thrust belts is a function of the geometry, duration, and timing of faults and how these structures have evolved over time. Yet in the Himalaya, uncertainties persist in whether vertical uplift and exhumation are dri...

Integrating Data Cleaning and Robustification: A Study on Linear Regression

In this study, we propose a general framework that integrates both optimistic and pessimistic optimization approaches in solving the regression problem to address outlier cleaning and robustification in a unified fashion. Although data cleaning aims to down-weight the outliers, r...

Longitudinal alignments and syntheses of multimodal clinical data for personalized medicine with the PULSE framework

Multimodal models capable of imputing diverse data used in single-cell biology studies provide potential foundational opportunities in clinical practice. However, patient data uniquely comprise longitudinal mosaic measurements that reflect underlying physiological dynamics and ex...

A cortical output channel for perceptual categorization

Abstract Perceptual categorization allows the brain to transform diverse sensory inputs into discrete representations that support flexible behavior [1–7]. Auditory cortex (ACtx) has been implicated in this process [8–14], but the cell-type-specific circuits that implement catego...

MUTYH Activity Maintains Telomere Stability in Response to Chronic Telomeric 8-Oxoguanine Damage in Cancer Cells

Telomeres are highly susceptible to oxidative DNA damage, particularly 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG), which is processed by glycosylase-initiated base excision repair (BER). OGG1 removes 8-oxoG opposite C, and MUTYH removes A misinserted opposite 8-oxoG to prevent mutations. While OGG1 h...

Bacterial ribonucleoprotein bodies maintain an acidic pH environment as a mechanism of enzyme regulation

Abstract Phase separated biomolecular condensates create subcellular niches, yet their role in client regulation remains unclear. Here, we demonstrate that Bacterial Ribonucleoprotein bodies (BR-bodies) are acidic. Using ratiometric fluorescent probes in vivo , we find BR-bodies...