Browse Articles

Pan-European atmospheric lead pollution, enhanced blood lead levels, and cognitive decline from Roman-era mining and smelting

Ancient texts and archaeological evidence indicate substantial lead exposure during antiquity that potentially impacted human health. Although lead exposure routes were many and included the use of glazed tablewares, paints, cosmetics, and even intentional ingestion, the most significant for the nonelite, rural majority of the population may have been through background air pollution from mining and smelting of silver and lead ores that underpinned the Roman economy. Here, we determined potential health effects of this air pollution using Arctic ice core measurements of Roman-era lead pollution, atmospheric modeling, and modern epidemiology-based relationships between air concentrations, blood lead levels (BLLs), and cognitive decline. Findings suggest air lead concentrations exceeded 150 ng/m 3 near metallurgical emission sources, with average enhancements of >1.0 ng/m 3 over Europe during the Pax Romana apogee of the Roman Empire. The result was blood lead enhancements in young children of about 2.4 µg/dl above an estimated Neolithic background of 1.0 µg/dl, leading to widespread cognitive decline including a 2.5-to-3 point reduction in intelligence quotient throughout the Roman Empire.

Racial/ethnic differences in post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 in children and adolescents in the United States

Nomogram model for decompressing craniectomy after mechanical thrombectomy in patients with acute ischemic stroke

NuFold: end-to-end approach for RNA tertiary structure prediction with flexible nucleobase center representation

Identification of a cryptic unbalanced translocation Der(22)t(12;22)(q24.33;q13.33) in a large Chinese family with Phelan-McDermid syndrome by nanopore sequencing

Quantum machine learning with Adaptive Boson Sampling via post-selection

BMI gain and dietary characteristics are risk factors of MASLD in non-obese individuals

Abstract This longitudinal observational study aimed to evaluate whether cardiometabolic factors and dietary characteristics are determinants of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in non-obese individuals (body mass index [BMI] < 25 kg/m²). The study was conducted at the Japanese Red Cross Society Kyoto Daiichi Hospital. Clinical data were longitudinally recorded at annual health checks. The diagnosis of MASLD was based on the results of abdominal ultrasonography and cardiometabolic criteria. Lifestyle behaviors and dietary characteristics were assessed using a self-administered questionnaire. A total of 4,100 non-obese middle-aged and older participants (1,636 men and 2,464 women) were followed up for an average of 6.44 ± 4.16 years. During the follow-up period, there were 410 new cases of MASLD in men (25.1%) and 484 in women (19.6%). The incidence rate was higher for men (39.7 per 1,000 person-years) than for women (30.1 per 1,000 person-years). Multivariable-adjusted logistic regression analyses using the rate of change per year with standardized values found that BMI gain was strongly associated with the onset of MASLD for both men (OR: 1.90, 95% CI: 1.64–2.19) and women (OR: 1.95, 95% CI: 1.72–2.21). Increased waist circumference and triglycerides were also associated with MASLD onset for both men and women. Lowering of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol was identified as a risk factor for MASLD in both men and women. Regarding dietary characteristics, the onset of MASLD was significantly and negatively associated with “often eating vegetables” for men (OR: 0.73, 95% CI: 0.57–0.93) and “often eating soy products” for women (OR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.58–0.88), even after adjusting for BMI change and other covariates. These findings suggest that maintaining body weight and favorable dietary characteristics are key factors in the prevention of MASLD in non-obese individuals.

Lactobacillus reuteri ZJ617 attenuates metabolic syndrome via microbiota-derived spermidine

Peptide nucleic acid-immobilised paper combined with multiplex recombinase polymerase amplification for the ultrasensitive and rapid detection of rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis

Anomalous entropy-driven kinetics of dislocation nucleation

Abstract The kinetics of dislocation reactions, such as dislocation multiplication, controls the plastic deformation in crystals beyond their elastic limit, therefore critical mechanisms in a number of applications in materials science. We present a series of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations that shows that one such type of reactions, the nucleation of dislocation at free surfaces, exhibit unconventional kinetics, including unexpectedly large nucleation rates under compression, very strong entropic stabilization under tension, as well as strong non-Arrhenius behavior. These unusual kinetics are quantitatively rationalized using a variational transition state theory approach coupled with an efficient numerical scheme for the estimation of vibrational entropy changes. These results highlight the need for a variational treatment of the kinetics to quantitatively capture dislocation reaction kinetics, especially at low-to-moderate strains where large deformations are required to activate reactions. These observations suggest possible explanations to previously observed unconventional deformation kinetics in both molecular dynamics simulations and experiments.

Impact of 17-alpha ethinyl estradiol (EE2) and diethyl phthalate (DEP) exposure on microRNAs expression and their target genes in differentiated SH-SY5Y cells

Abstract Environmental endocrine disruptor chemicals (EDCs) have raised significant concerns due to their potential adverse effects on human health, particularly on the central nervous system (CNS). This study provides a comparative analysis of the effects of 17-alpha ethinyl estradiol (EE2) and diethyl phthalate (DEP) on neuronal cell proliferation and neurotoxicity. Using differentiated SH-SY5Y human neuronal cells, we evaluated cell viability, microRNA (miRNA) regulation, and RNA expression following exposure to subtoxic concentrations of EE2 and DEP. Our results show that both EDCs downregulated specific miRNAs—miR-18b-5p, miR-200a-3p, and miR-653-5p—affecting key processes such as cell proliferation, survival, and apoptosis. Gene expression analysis revealed the upregulation of EGFR, IGF1R, BTG2, and SH3BP4, implicating these miRNAs in the regulation of the Ras and PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathways. Our findings highlight distinct cellular responses: DEP disrupts PTEN activity, while EE2 enhances phosphorylation within the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway, promoting pro-survival and anti-apoptotic signals. This study emphasizes the urgent need for regulatory measures to mitigate the neurotoxic effects of EDCs and offers valuable insights into their molecular impacts on brain health.

Noise amplification and ill-convergence of Richardson-Lucy deconvolution

Abstract Richardson-Lucy (RL) deconvolution optimizes the likelihood of the object estimate for an incoherent imaging system. It can offer an increase in contrast, but converges poorly, and shows enhancement of noise as the iteration progresses. We have discovered the underlying reason for this problematic convergence behaviour using a Cramér Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) analysis. An analytical expression for the CRLB diverges for spatial frequency components that approach the diffraction limit from below. The resulting mean noise variance per pixel diverges for large images. These results imply that a regular optimum of the likelihood does not exist, and that RL deconvolution is necessarily ill-convergent.

Relationship Between Body Mass Index and Low Skeletal Muscle Mass in Adults Based on NHANES 2011–2018

Correction for Gadea et al., The smallest electrochemical bubbles

CD133+PD-L1+ cancer cells confer resistance to adoptively transferred engineered macrophage-based therapy in melanoma

Retraction Note: Confidence level based complex polytopic fuzzy Einstein aggregation operators and their application to decision-making process

Taming large-scale genomic analyses via sparsified genomics

Abstract Searching for similar genomic sequences is an essential and fundamental step in biomedical research. State-of-the-art computational methods performing such comparisons fail to cope with the exponential growth of genomic sequencing data. We introduce the concept of sparsified genomics where we systematically exclude a large number of bases from genomic sequences and enable faster and memory-efficient processing of the sparsified, shorter genomic sequences, while providing comparable accuracy to processing non-sparsified sequences. Sparsified genomics provides benefits to many genomic analyses and has broad applicability. Sparsifying genomic sequences accelerates the state-of-the-art read mapper (minimap2) by 2.57-5.38x, 1.13-2.78x, and 3.52-6.28x using real Illumina, HiFi, and ONT reads, respectively, while providing comparable memory footprint, 2x smaller index size, and more correctly detected variations compared to minimap2. Sparsifying genomic sequences makes containment search through very large genomes and large databases 72.7-75.88x (1.62-1.9x when indexing is preprocessed) faster and 723.3x more storage-efficient than searching through non-sparsified genomic sequences (with CMash and KMC3). Sparsifying genomic sequences enables robust microbiome discovery by providing 54.15-61.88x (1.58-1.71x when indexing is preprocessed) faster and 720x more storage-efficient taxonomic profiling of metagenomic samples over the state-of-the-art tool (Metalign).

Instantaneous self-recovery and ultra-low detection limit hydrogel electronic sensor for temporomandibular disorders intelligent diagnosis

Author Correction: Sublimed C60 for efficient and repeatable perovskite-based solar cells

Bioinspired artificial antioxidases for efficient redox homeostasis and maxillofacial bone regeneration

Abstract Reconstructing large, inflammatory maxillofacial defects using stem cell-based therapy faces challenges from adverse microenvironments, including high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), inadequate oxygen, and intensive inflammation. Here, inspired by the reaction mechanisms of intracellular antioxidant defense systems, we propose the de novo design of an artificial antioxidase using Ru-doped layered double hydroxide (Ru-hydroxide) for efficient redox homeostasis and maxillofacial bone regeneration. Our studies demonstrate that Ru-hydroxide consists hydroxyls-synergistic monoatomic Ru centers, which efficiently react with oxygen species and collaborate with hydroxyls for rapid proton and electron transfer, thus exhibiting efficient, broad-spectrum, and robust ROS scavenging performance. Moreover, Ru-hydroxide can effectively sustain stem cell viability and osteogenic differentiation in elevated ROS environments, modulating the inflammatory microenvironment during bone tissue regeneration in male mice. We believe this Ru-hydroxide development offers a promising avenue for designing antioxidase-like materials to treat various inflammation-associated disorders, including arthritis, diabetic wounds, enteritis, and bone fractures.