Research works

A budding science of illegal markets

Illegal markets create untold societal and environmental harm, but they have attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention. This paper explores illegal markets as a class of objects. It considers similarities and differences across markets, with particular attention to nine:...

Osimertinib With or Without Chemotherapy in Advanced Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer With EGFR and Concurrent TP53 Mutations

Importance: Combination therapy has emerged as a promising therapeutic approach for patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, its clinical benefit-risk profile remains a focus of ongoing debate. Identifying patients...

Changing models in cultural evolution: from (quasi-)Darwinian to ecological mechanisms: A commentary on ‘Quasi-Darwinian mechanisms: ecological inheritance and cumulative culture’ by Kim Sterelny

Kim Sterelny’s analysis of cultural learning moves cultural evolution theory away from Darwinian models toward cognition, ecological scaffolding and incentives. We argue his insights warrant a more radical conclusion: cultural evolution needs no Darwinian vocabulary, even in its...

Illegal markets for cigarettes and e-cigarettes

This paper discusses the long-standing illegal markets for cigarettes and the more recently emerged illegal markets for e-cigarettes. We identify three distinctive market fundamentals that help explain many features of the illegal markets. First, in contrast to some illegal goods...

The Dutch cardiomyopathy registry (DCR); rationale and registry design

BACKGROUND: Cardiomyopathies are important causes of arrhythmias, sudden cardiac death, and heart failure. With accumulating knowledge in clinical, genetic, and molecular phenotyping, the number of distinct disease entities is growing. There is a need for broad, inclusive, high-q...

Structure and dynamics in metallic glasses from nanodiffraction

Abstract Medium-range structure at a length scale between ~0.5 and 3 nm strongly influences the properties and phase transformations of metallic glass alloys. Electron diffraction methods based on four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy are well suited for char...

A national-scale assessment of the impact of canals on urban temperatures

Abstract Urban populations are particularly vulnerable to heat-related mortality and morbidity. Climate-responsive urban design, which can include development of green and bluespaces, has the potential to offset climate change-related impacts. Compared to greenspaces, the effects...

Human ticklishness is a widespread, culturally shared and bodily organized sensory experience

Abstract Human ticklishness is one of the oldest yet unresolved scientific puzzles. As early as the time of Aristotle and Socrates, scholars have speculated on its origins and function, but fundamental questions remain. Is ticklishness culturally shared or specific? Does it follo...

Oral nano-delivery of a gut microbial metabolite enhances T cell stemness for cancer immunotherapy

Gut microbial metabolites play crucial roles in regulating systemic immunity, but their mechanisms and limited drug-like properties remain unresolved. Here we report an oral nano-formulation that leverages gut microbial metabolites to modulate T cell metabolism and amplify antitu...

Nuclear activities and interactome of the NS5 protein of tick-borne encephalitis virus

Orthoflaviviruses are RNA viruses responsible for significant diseases in humans, domesticated animals, and wildlife. Their NS5 protein is central in viral replication, functioning both as an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and a methyltransferase, while also modulating cellular pro...

Deep learning-based prediction of self-energies from ab initio dynamical mean-field theory for real materials with minimal data sets

Abstract Density-functional theory (DFT) has been the workhorse of first-principles calculations for decades, and DFT-derived energies and forces are now widely used to train machine learning models of inter-atomic potentials. However, DFT’s single-particle treatment of exchange-...

Automatic value learning results in counterproductive human behavior

Abstract Humans are adept at accurately estimating the value of available choices from accumulated experience. However, cognitive processing also incorporates irrelevant information during deliberation, undermining decision accuracy. Here, we show that credit assignment operates...

Evidence for the acquisition of a proteorhodopsin-like rhodopsin by a chrysophyte-infecting giant virus

ABSTRACT Chrysophytes are nanoflagellate protists widespread in aquatic ecosystems with diverse trophic roles as primary producers and bacterivores. Molecular evidence suggests that chrysophytes are commonly infected by giant viruses, but isolates of such virus-host systems have...

How illegal wildlife trade adheres to and defies conventional market behavior

Illegal wildlife markets comprise a complex global economy generating criminal profits while harming biodiversity and livelihoods. The negative externalities from biodiversity loss, ecosystem destabilization, and zoonotic disease risk may be orders of magnitude larger than the mu...

A descriptive analysis for the markets for counterfeit products

Product counterfeiting is a pervasive crime that involves the unauthorized use of a legitimate trademark, a violation of intellectual property rights. Counterfeiting is also one of many forms of global illicit trade, mirroring legitimate markets in structure and reach. Counterfei...

Stability and turbulence in illegal drug markets

This article provides a primer on illegal drug markets, with a focus on the structure and nature of these markets and the enterprises involved. The markets for illegal drugs are large, with annual retail expenditures likely exceeding $100 billion in the United States alone. Many...

Casting light on the workings of illegal fishing markets

About 3.5 million fishing vessels ply the world’s oceans, providing livelihoods and food for millions of people. Sound management is key to fisheries’ sustainability, but illegal fishing, along with fishing overcapacity generally and environmental change, are putting many fisheri...

Illegal firearms markets: Transaction patterns, evolving sources, and importance in criminal misuse

In the United States, the legal status of the 30 to 40 million annual firearms transactions is defined by state and federal regulations. These regulations primarily aim to reduce criminal misuse while preserving access for the large majority of adults who lack a serious criminal...

The policy construction of illegal markets: Exploring variation, success, failure, and unintended consequences

Illegal markets, broadly defined to include markets where only specific transactions are illegal, are the consequence of policy, either a prohibition or highly restrictive regulation. They are generated by a variety of concerns, some moral, some pragmatic. They are often tied to...

Robust out-of-distribution prediction of Buchwald–Hartwig reactions

Abstract The Buchwald–Hartwig cross-coupling is a cornerstone of modern pharmaceutical synthesis, yet predictive modeling of its outcomes remains constrained by data quality and chemical space coverage. Electronic laboratory notebooks contain heterogeneous, noisy records, while o...