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Scalable lens-enhanced broadbeam mmWave harvester delivering tens of milliwatts for wireless power transfer in next-generation smart city environments

Structural basis and evolutionary pathways of glycerol-1-phosphate transport in marine bacteria

All cells use lipid membranes to maintain cellular integrity and function, though Archaea utilize lipids composed of glycerol-1-phosphate (G1P), while Bacteria and Eukaryotes use glycerol-3-phosphate (G3P). Given that Archaea contribute significantly to global marine biomass, accounting for 0.3 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon in the oceans, we aimed to uncover how archaeal G1P is recycled by marine microorganisms. Through a multidisciplinary approach combining microbiology, biochemistry, and structural biology, we identified a G1P transporter in marine bacteria, which we named GpxB. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that GpxB belongs to the organic phosphonate transporter (PhnT) family and is widely distributed in the marine microbiome, found in approximately 5 to 10% of microbial cells in surface marine waters. Strikingly, we also identified a second G1P transporter, UgpB, that is known to transport G3P and belongs to the carbohydrate uptake transporter-1 (CUT1) family, in the model bacterium Phaeobacter sp. MED193. To explore the evolutionary pathways that led to the formation of G1P binding sites in both the PhnT and CUT1 families, we determined the structures of GpxB and UgpB bound to G1P and G3P. Using structure-guided mutagenesis and a comparative analysis of the binding pockets within the PhnT and CUT1 families, we traced their evolutionary trajectories, highlighting the distinct strategies through which G1P-binding sites developed in these two protein families.

Fetal Assessment Suite (FetAS): a web-based platform for automatic fetal MRI analysis using AI

An electron transport complex required in the gut sensitizes <i>Bacteroides</i> to a pore-forming type VI secretion toxin

Data suggest that antagonism between bacteria is prevalent within the gut microbiome. Such antagonism could have profound consequences on the fitness of species; however, the susceptibility determinants to even the most pervasive antagonistic factors in this ecosystem remain incompletely understood. Here, we screened for genetic factors that impact the susceptibility of Bacteroides to type VI secretion system (T6SS)-delivered toxins. This revealed that the Bte2 family of pore-forming toxins, which are widespread in B. fragilis and other human gut-associated Bacteroidales, strictly requires the H + /Na + -translocating ferredoxin:NAD + reductase (Rnf) electron transport chain within target cells in order to intoxicate. In Bacteroides , the precise metabolic role of the conserved Rnf pathway has not been defined. We establish that the Rnf complex is important for redox balancing within cells utilizing sugars derived from dietary fiber and is critical for fitness in vivo. Surprisingly, we find that while the intact Rnf membrane complex is required for Bte2 intoxication, Rnf-catalyzed electron transport is dispensable. We propose that the Rnf complex facilitates Bte2 membrane insertion, leading to intoxication via membrane depolarization. Our data suggest that T6SS toxins may avoid collateral damage within a complex ecosystem by recognizing discriminatory features of competitor species.

Automated methodological approach using artificial intelligence and fuzzy inference for qualitative sustainable and economic assessment of buildings

Upper mantle temperatures illuminate the Iceland hotspot track and understanding of ice–Earth interactions in Greenland

The thermal structure of the Earth beneath Greenland reflects the tectonic history of the region and impacts ice sheet evolution due to surface heat flow and the influence of temperature on Earth rheology, and thus glacial isostatic adjustment. We present results from a probabilistic joint inversion of multiple satellite and land-based datasets to determine the thermal structure of the lithosphere and upper mantle beneath Greenland and consider the implications for our understanding of the tectonic history, isostatic deformation, and Greenland ice sheet evolution. Passage of Greenland over the Iceland hotspot is well known but there remains considerable debate on the trajectory of this path. Our findings reveal strong lateral variability in thermal structure that is consistent with reconstructions of a west-to-east hotspot track across central Greenland. Applying our temperature model to infer mechanical properties of the solid Earth reveals viscosity variations reaching 3 orders of magnitude in the upper mantle. We generate an ensemble of plausible 3D viscosity models and produce quality fits to both paleo sea level and contemporary vertical land motion datasets. This result supports the veracity of our temperature model and questions the need for a large component of transient deformation to explain the observations. Our regional temperature and viscosity models can be used to develop improved reconstructions and understanding of past Greenland ice sheet changes and explore the influence of 3D Earth structure on simulating ice sheet and sea level evolution in the past and future.

Ultrasound-measured enlargement of the cross-sectional area of the median nerve as a marker for early neuronal lesions in pediatric type 1 diabetes

Demographic responses of North Atlantic seabirds to seasonal ocean warming

Climate-driven ocean warming is profoundly reshaping marine ecosystems, with cascading effects on biodiversity and trophic interactions. For migratory marine predators such as seabirds, demographic responses to warming depend on when and where populations are exposed across the annual cycle. Therefore, integrating demographic monitoring and tracking data, across broad geographic and temporal scales, is essential, given the spatial and seasonal variability in ocean warming. Here, we integrated long-term demographic data, seasonal distributions, and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) for 26 populations of five seabird species breeding in the North–East Atlantic to assess the effects of SSTs on reproduction, survival, and population growth trajectories. Demographic responses varied widely among populations and seasons, but negative effects were most consistently associated with warming during the autumn period postbreeding, particularly in the Barents and East Greenland Seas. Winter warming also corresponded to reduced survival, while breeding-season SSTs showed fewer significant effects on reproductive rates. Populations with dual responses to warming in both the breeding and nonbreeding seasons had the lowest projected population growth rates under future SSTs given a high emissions scenario. These results demonstrate that population vulnerability reflects the interaction between seabirds’ year-round distributions and regional ocean warming. This underlines the need to integrate year-round tracking and long-term monitoring to inform conservation strategies and marine spatial planning to ensure climate-resilient marine ecosystems.

Polygenic prediction of cardiorespiratory fitness in the Trøndelag health study (HUNT)

Abstract Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) has a strong genetic component and low CRF is a major risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a polygenic score (PGS) for CRF (CRF PGS ) and assess its associations with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality. We hypothesized that the CRF PGS would demonstrate similar cardioprotective benefits as the CRF phenotype. Effect estimates from a genome-wide association study on directly measured CRF in the Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT; n  = 4525) were used in a Bayesian regression framework to develop multiple PGSs in an independent cohort from the UK Biobank ( n  = 65,165). The top performing score was applied in the HUNT target cohort, excluding the discovery sample ( n  = 82,109). The PGS-CRF association varied considerably as a function of model fit and phenotypic accuracy. There was a difference of 1.55 [95% confidence interval: 1.26, 1.84]  mL·kg −1 ·min −1  between the bottom and top decile of the CRF PGS . Moreover, a high CRF PGS demonstrated cardioprotective effects, with reduced risk for CVD, myocardial infarction, hypertension, and all-cause mortality. Additionally, in women, we observed that the CRF PGS predisposed to lower risk of heart failure and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. We developed the first PGS for CRF using gold standard phenotypes and multiple independent cohorts. Genetic susceptibility to high CRF may have a clinically meaningful impact on the phenotype. The CRF PGS was better to identify individuals with slightly higher lifelong levels of CRF, which appears to protect against cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

Actin network heterogeneity tunes activator–inhibitor dynamics at the cell cortex

Biological systems can display diverse patterns of self-organization, even when built on conserved networks of interaction between molecular species. In these cases, reaction–diffusion equations provide a valuable tool to learn how new dynamics could emerge from quantitative tuning of parameters. Bringing these models into quantitative correspondence with biological data remains an outstanding challenge, especially when the data manifest heterogeneities that are difficult to account for mathematically. One particular example occurs in cell biology, where the membrane-bound regulatory protein RhoA interacts with the filamentous actin cortex in an activator–inhibitor loop. Though this core biochemical circuit is conserved across multiple cell types in different organisms, it produces different patterns of RhoA activity in different contexts, from traveling waves in starfish to transient pulses in Caenorhabditis elegans . To understand how this variation emerges, we develop an activator–inhibitor model that accounts explicitly for actin assembly and heterogeneity. By fitting the model to summary statistics of experimental data, subject to known parameter constraints, we show that F-actin assembly dynamics tune the spatiotemporal patterns of RhoA activity. A minimal representation of these dynamics reveals how directional transport (via polymerization) combines with stochasticity in F-actin number and orientation to produce the observed patterns. This work sheds light on how phenotypic diversity arises from heterogeneity and anisotropy, with important implications for the next generation of activator–inhibitor models.

An enhanced dual inception-attention-BiGRU-attention model integrating wavelet transform for wearable sensor-based human activity recognition

Amazon forest faces severe decline under the dual pressures of anthropogenic climate change and land-use change

The Amazon is a key climate system component, hotspot of biodiversity and many other ecosystem functions. However, progressive rainforest degradation, driven by anthropogenic climate change and land-use change, is increasing the risk of a large-scale critical ecosystem transition. Previous studies highlight forest vulnerability to isolated or combined climate change and land-use pressures, but have not disentangled individual driver contributions. This crucial knowledge gap needs to be addressed for a holistic understanding of the risks that the rainforest is facing. Combining Earth System Model data with a robust detection and attribution framework, we assess forest decline under individual and combined pressures of climate change and land-use change. We assess abrupt shifts and nonlinearities in local and basin-wide forest decline to reveal signs of resilience loss and potentially imminent forest transitions. We identify land-use change as the dominant driver of past degradation, accounting for 80% of the historical (1950 to 2014) forest decline. Future projections reveal that up to 38% of the mid-20th century forest area could be lost by 2100, with 25% caused by continued deforestation and 13% caused by unmitigated global warming. Importantly, the risk of abrupt rather than gradual forest decline increases as global warming progresses, with a strong nonlinear trend beyond a threshold of 2.3°. These findings highlight a substantial risk of a large-scale transition, with potentially devastating consequences for the global climate system, regional water and carbon cycles, human livelihoods, and biodiversity. Limiting this risk requires rigorous forest protection and climate mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement.

Real-time retail planogram compliance application using computer vision and virtual shelves

Mapping epileptogenic brain using a unified spatial–temporal–spectral source imaging framework

Noninvasive electrophysiological source imaging (ESI) is a valuable tool for localizing and imaging brain activity, with significant potential to aid presurgical planning in focal drug-resistant epilepsy (fDRE) patients. Scalp electroencephalography (EEG) biomarkers, including interictal spikes, high-frequency oscillations (HFOs), and seizures, each offer unique capabilities in estimating the epileptogenic zone (EZ). However, there is a limited quantitative understanding of how these biomarkers differ in source-imaging precision, requiring distinct processing pipelines. Here, we developed a spatial–temporal–spectral imaging (STSI) framework for precision source imaging, and quantitatively evaluated various epilepsy biomarkers for source imaging in 2,081 individual events (spikes, HFOs, and seizures) from a cohort of 42 fDRE patients, comparing results to clinical ground truth such as surgical resection outcomes and intracranial EEG-defined seizure onset zones. The STSI enabled quantitative comparisons across key EEG epilepsy-related biomarkers, with averaged localization errors of 6.67 mm for seizures, 8.73 mm for HFOs overlapping with spikes (pHFO), 10.28 mm for HFO-riding spikes (pSpike), 19.59 mm for general spikes (aSpike), and 36.53 mm for general HFOs (aHFO), respectively, for seizure-free patients. These findings indicate that HFOs overlapping with spikes is the most spatially accurate interictal biomarker for mapping the EZ. The proposed STSI framework not only establishes a unified analysis approach for epileptic biomarkers to enhance presurgical planning in focal drug-resistant epilepsy, but could also generalize as a versatile tool for mapping event-related potentials, neural oscillations, and dynamic brain states, within a single framework to advance cognitive neuroscience research and clinical management of neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Unveiling potent xanthine oxidase inhibitors in two Balanophora spp. using machine learning-based virtual screening and molecular docking approach

Abstract Pharmacological studies revealed that the Balanophora species contains diverse phytochemicals which enable interesting biological activities and emphasize their pharmaceutical relevance. Previously, we identified significant xanthine oxidase (XO) inhibitory activity from extracts of the two Balanophora spp. ( Balanophora subcupularis P.C. Tam and Balanophora tobiracola Makino). However, the specific compounds responsible for this activity remain unidentified so far. Thus, in the present study, we focused on elucidating the compounds inducing the XO inhibitory effect of extracts from Balanophora species. Therefore, a combination of advanced liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC-QToF-HRMS), virtual screening using machine learning (ML) models, and molecular docking simulation was applied. Using LC-QToF-HRMS, 23 and 21 compounds were identified in the ethyl acetate fractions of B. subcupularis and B. tobiracola , respectively. Next, a curated dataset of natural and synthetic compounds with known XO inhibitory activity was employed to train several ML models. Adducing five selected ML models, the virtual screening process identified the potentially active compounds 1-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-6,7-dihydroxy-1,2-dihydro-2,3-naphthalenedicarboxylic acid, taxifolin, and 1- O -caffeoyl-6- O -(S)-brevifolincarboxyl- β -D-glucopyranose. All the compounds found in the two Balanophora spp. underwent docking simulations, in which MTE, FES, and AFH were retained in the active site of XO, ensuring reliable re-docking results. Finally, taxifolin emerged as the most promising novel XO inhibitor, demonstrating greater potential than the established drug allopurinol, as supported by both the virtual screening nomination and docking simuation. These findings contribute to the development of natural XO inhibitors and may open new opportunities for gout treatment and uric acid level control.

PFAS-contaminated drinking water harms infants

There is evidence of widespread human exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) but limited evidence of the human health impacts of this exposure. Using data on New Hampshire births from 2010–2019, we show that mothers receiving water that had flowed beneath a PFAS-contaminated site, as opposed to comparable mothers receiving water that had flowed toward a PFAS-contaminated site, had 191% [95% CI: 83–298%] higher first-year infant mortality (611 [268–955] additional first-year deaths per 100k births); 168% [42–294%] more births before 28 wk of gestational age (466 [116–817] additional such births per 100k births); and 180% [57–302%] more births with weight below 1,000 g (607 [192–1022] additional such births per 100k births). Extrapolating to the contiguous U.S., PFAS contamination imposes annual social costs of approximately $8 billion. These health costs are substantially larger than current outside estimates of the cost of removing PFAS from the public water supply.

Automated computer vision and dose–response modeling improve throughput and accuracy of an ex vivo functional precision medicine platform

Multiple weak brakes act in concert to control STIM1 and store-operated calcium entry

Store-operated Ca 2+ entry is a key signaling pathway controlled by the interaction of the ER Ca 2+ sensor STIM1 with the Orai1 Ca 2+ channel following ER Ca 2+ depletion. To avoid generating pathological effects, STIM1 must remain mostly inactive under resting, ER-replete conditions yet respond rapidly and reversibly to changes in ER Ca 2+ content. It is not well understood how these conflicting requirements are met. Here we combine single-molecule FRET measurements of full-length dimeric STIM1 in lipid membranes with an AlphaFold2 structural model to describe the structure and regulation of the resting state. We show that STIM1 activity is controlled by the combined operation of four relatively weak restraints, or brakes. The Ca 2+ -bound EF-SAM luminal domain acts as a steric restraint to inhibit spontaneous activity. In the cytosolic region, the domain-swapped hydrophobic interaction and alignment of CC1α1 with CC3 of the CRAC activation domain (CAD) positions the apex of CAD next to the ER membrane, where electrostatic lipid–protein interactions further stabilize the inactive conformation. A fourth brake is created by hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions of the two CC1α2/3 domains attached to the base of CAD. Disruption of any one of these brakes triggers spontaneous STIM1 activation, showing that the concerted action of these relatively weak restraints serves to minimize spontaneous activity in resting cells with full ER Ca 2+ stores, while allowing rapid activation in response to changes in store content.

Computational drug repositioning approach to predict multi-target therapeutics for epilepsy

Abstract Epilepsy affects millions of people globally, with approximately one-third of patients experiencing drug-resistant seizures. Developing new anti-epileptic drugs is time-intensive and costly, prompting interest in computational drug repositioning strategies. Here, we report on a comprehensive drug repositioning approach to identify the multi-targeted therapeutic option(s) for epileptic seizures. All approved drugs from the DrugBank database were screened for their anti-epileptic properties, which involved predicting their blood-brain permeability and clustering them based on structural similarity with marketed anti-epilepsy drugs. The screened drugs were subjected to molecular docking against previously identified therapeutic target proteins (Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel α2; GABA receptor α1-β1; and Voltage-Gated Calcium Channel α1G), A total of 46 drugs showed better binding affinity than the respective standard drugs - Carbamazepine, Clonazepam and Pregabalin for the selected target proteins - Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel α2; GABA receptor α1-β1; and Voltage-Gated Calcium Channel α1G, respectively. The binding pocket and literature data mining revealed three drugs, Oxaprozin, Pizotifen, and Cyproheptadine, that bind within the precise binding pocket and have no reported severe side effects related to seizure onset. The molecular dynamics simulation studies revealed that all three compounds exhibited more stable and better binding interactions with their corresponding drug targets. Oxaprozin, among the identified three drugs, showed a very stable binding and can be considered a potential repurposed drug for epilepsy, warranting further preclinical trials.

The upside and challenge of getting it wrong