Title
Topic
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Functional insights into protein signaling
This review in the journal Life provides “Functional Insights into Protein Kinase A (PKA) Signaling from C. elegans.” PhD. students Fereshteh Sadeghian and Perla Castaneda, along with postdoctoral researcher Mustafi Amin and professor of biology Erin Cram, write that Caenorhabditis elegans, an unsegmented nematode, “provides a powerful genetic platform for understanding how [PKA] can regulate an astounding variety of physiological responses.”
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Better diagnoses for visual vergence disorders
Common vergence disorders, characterized by instability between a subject’s eyes as they try to focus on an object (convergence and divergence), can be diagnosed by examining the horizontal fusional reserves of the eye. This study looks at “Infrared eyetracking technology [which] shows promise for obtaining automated and objective measurements of fusional reserves.” This paper is the result of an international collaboration with the University of Auckland, New Zealand. See the full list of authors and read their research, “Objective estimation of fusional reserves using infrared eye tracking: the digital fusion-range test,” in Clinical and Experimental Optometry.
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Coastal upwelling helps delicate species survive
This article is an important addition to our understanding of species abundance and distribution—a subject becoming ever more important with ongoing climate change. For this study, researchers used “wavelet analysis” to examine sixteen intertidal zones along the the coast of Europe. Results show that “upwelling”—a process that brings deep, cold water to the surface—produces refuges for thermally delicate species by mitigating rising temperatures. See the full list of authors and read “Coastal upwelling generates cryptic temperature refugia” in Nature.
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‘Effect of Dissolved Humic Acids and Coated Humic Acids on Tetracycline Adsorption by K₂CO₃-Activated Magnetic Biochar’
“Humic acids (HAs) widely exist in water environment, and has an important impact on the adsorption of pollutants. Herein, HAs (both dissolved and coated) was employed to assess the effect on the removal of the organic contaminant tetracycline (TC) by K2CO3 modified magnetic biochar (KMBC). Results showed that low concentration of dissolved HAs promoted TC removal, likely due to a bridging effect, while higher concentration of dissolved HAs inhibited TC adsorption because of the competition of adsorption sites on KMBC.” Find the paper and the full list of authors in Scientific Reports.
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What is ‘Wasta,’ and how does it affect business in the Arab world?
“Recent research examines business practices in the Arab world and how they differ from Western practices. Wasta is a practice in Arab society where people use their personal relationships to gain favor… Foreign firm managers operating in Arab societies will need to develop a solid understanding of the practice and its different perceptions among varying Arab groups in order to be successful in conducting business in the Arab world.” Find the paper and the full list of authors at the Insights @ Center for Emerging Markets.
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Bribery and the ‘new normal’ in transition economies
“Recent research examines 310 privately owned small and medium-sized companies from 22 transition economies in Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics to see how the payment of bribes affects entrepreneur perceptions of the business environment. Those who more frequently pay bribes create a “new normal” business environment that is perceived as increasingly harsh. However, for entrepreneurs who infrequently bribe, their ‘new normal’ is likely to be perceived as more supportive of business.” Read “How Bribe-Payers Create a ‘New Normal’ of Corruption in Transition Economies” and see the full list of authors at the Insights @ Center for Emerging Markets.
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Will eating (certain) plants increase cognitive health in children? This study hopes to find out
With “Enhancing children’s cognitive function and achievement through carotenoid consumption: The Integrated Childhood Ocular Nutrition Study (iCONS) protocol,” researchers hope to discover the effect of carotenoids (plant pigments) on preadolescence. Carotenoids have been shown to positively impact cognition in adults, and this proposed, placebo-controlled, double-blind study will by the first to study the effect of two of these pigments—lutein and zeaxanthin—on preadolescents. Their hypothesis states, “children receiving the carotenoid supplement will exhibit greater gains in cognitive function and achievement relative to the waitlist placebo group.” Find the full list of authors and their research in Contemporary Clinical Trials.
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Understanding the photochemistry of solar panel systems
Norbornadiene is a hydrocarbon useful in storing solar energy due to its “high energy storage density,” but much of the mechanism by which it functions is not understood. In “Multiconfigurational Calculations and Photodynamics Describe Norbornadiene Photochemistry,” the authors “present a full computational study on the excited-state deactivation mechanism of [norbornadiene] in the gas phase.” Find the paper and the full list of authors at ChemRxiv.
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Breakthrough in potential treatments for opioid use disorders
This paper investigates the “CB1 receptors,” and identified an antagonist to that receptor, AM4113, which “effectively blocked fentanyl discrimination” in male rats. The results of the study show that “targeting CB1 receptors might be a viable approach to develop new medications for opioid use disorders.” Read “Effects of the cannabinoid CB1-receptor neutral antagonist AM4113 and antagonist/inverse agonist rimonabant on fentanyl discrimination in male rats” and find the full list of authors in Drug and Alcohol Dependence.
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Audit disclosures remain ‘highly relevant’ to investors
In this article on the impact that audit disclosures have on investors and their judgments, the authors take “a ‘what if’ exploratory public policy perspective of evaluating the potential effects on investors’ audit quality judgments and investment decisions.” They use two experiments to “manipulate: inspection reporting… and inspection selection method,” ultimately finding “that disclosure of audit strengths is highly relevant to investment decisions.” Read “An Examination of the Effects of PCAOB Inspection Selection Method and Disclosure of Audit Strengths on Investor Judgments” and see the full list of authors in Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory.
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Memory and culture at Queens College Colloquium
Associate Dean Christie Chung gave a talk at Queens College, New York, on October 31, 2022, entitled, “A Cross-Cultural Examination of the Age-related Positivity Effect in Memory.” The talk was based on her research, published in the International Journal of Aging and Human Development.
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How young people think about AI, and how to help them understand it
Youth often claim that they don’t “trust” artificial intelligence, but the authors of this research studied actual youth understanding of how AI works, and instantiated a program that “deepened their understanding of AI” and “empowered them to creatively express their understandings and apprehensions about AI.” Participants in the study were primarily BIPOC and from underprivileged backgrounds, with lessened access to STEM fields. See the full list of authors and read their research paper, “In the Black Mirror: Youth Investigations into Artificial Intelligence,” in ACM Transactions on Computing Education.
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‘De Novo Asymmetric Achmatowicz Approach to Oligosaccharide Natural Products’
“The development and application of the asymmetric synthesis of oligosaccharides from achiral starting materials is reviewed. This de novo asymmetric approach centers around the use of asymmetric catalysis for the synthesis of optically pure furan alcohols in conjunction with Achmatowicz oxidative rearrangement for the synthesis of various pyranones.” Find the paper and the full list of authors at Chemical Communications.
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Measuring how early-life trauma affects anxiety
This studies deepens our understanding of the connection between “Early life adversity” and “the incidence of later-life anxiety disorders.” By measuring the ultrasonic vocalizations of rats separated from their mothers at early stages, they identify the effects this separation can have later in life. The paper also measures the differing responses between male and female rats. Read “Age- and sex-specific effects of maternal separation on the acoustic startle reflex in rats: early baseline enhancement in females and blunted response to ambiguous threat” and find the full list of authors in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.
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Collecting the microbiomes of ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems
So-called “blue carbon” ecosystems are marine environments that serve as valuable carbon sinks, and are thus vital aids against climate change. Their effectivity, however, “is strongly influenced by the metabolism of soil-associated microbes.” As genetic sequencing technologies continue to improve, scientists can collect “tremendous amounts of data on what taxa comprise belowground microbial assemblages.” This paper provides a “toolbox… for the acquisition, management, and integration of Blue Carbon-associated sequencing data and metadata to potentially elucidate novel mechanisms behind Blue Carbon dynamics.” Read “Pathways for Understanding Blue Carbon Microbiomes with Amplicon Sequencing,” and see the full list of authors in Microorganisms.
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How to handle your frogs: An introduction to eggs and embryos
This topic introduction by Dean of the College of Science Hazel Sive, along with Richard Harland (University of California, Berkeley), describes the process for obtaining Xenopus laevis and tropicalis, varieties of clawed frogs. The article covers everything from how to handle the frogs, how to obtain healthy eggs, in vitro fertilization of the eggs, and how to raise tadpoles. Read this introduction, titled “Obtaining Xenopus Eggs and Embryos,” at CSH Protocols.
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‘Deformation Spaces, Rescaled Bundles and the Kirillov Character Formula’
Written by professor of mathematics Maxim Braverman and Zelevinsky postdoctoral fellow Ahmad Reza Haj Saeedi Sadegh. “In this paper, we construct a smooth vector bundle over the deformation to the normal cone DNC(V,M) through a rescaling of a vector bundle E→V, which generalizes the construction of the spinor rescaled bundle over the tangent groupoid by Nigel Higson and Zelin Yi. We also provide an equivariant version of their construction. As the main application, we recover the Kirillov character formula for the equivariant index of Dirac-type operators.” Find their paper and the full list of authors at ArXiv.
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‘A Lemma of Lazarsfeld and the Jacobian Blow Up’
“For a complex analytic function f, the exceptional divisor of the jacobian blow-up is of great importance. In this paper, we show what a lemma from the thesis of Lazarsfeld tells one about the structure of this exceptional divisor.” Find the paper at ArXiv.
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How financial assistance affects entrepreneurial decision making
In addressing the crises facing modern society—like climate change, or income inequality—”economic development plays a key role.” This research “seeks to understand how different types of aid affect the strategic choices local firms and entrepreneurs make in the assisted markets, as well as the resulting outcomes. ” Read the article and see the full list of authors at the Insights @ Center for Emerging Markets.
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Watching hot metal cool: Patterns in materials science
Material design, as it moves into the world of microstructures, relies on understanding “solid-liquid interface patterns.” Previous studies have identified “dendritic patterns” as metal alloys cool, and this paper offers a new mode of capturing these patterns through “several image analysis methods to achieve this goal reliably despite varying contrast and noise levels.” See the full list of authors and read their research paper, “Dynamics of solidification microstructure formation in DECLIC-DSI onboard ISS: dendritic patterns data treatment,” at HAL Open Science.
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‘Time-Reversal Quantum Spin Hall Phase is Distinct From the Z₂ Topological Insulator’
“For a time-reversal symmetric system, the quantum spin Hall phase is assumed to be the same as the Z2 topological insulator phase in the existing literature. The spin Chern number Cs is supposed to yield the same topological classification as the Z2 invariant. Here, by investigating the topological electronic structures of monolayer α-phase group V elements, we uncover the presence of a topological phase in α-Sb, which can be characterized by a spin Chern number Cs=2, even though it is Z2 trivial.” See the full list of authors and read the pre-print at Research Square.
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Advances in imaging amphibian regeneration
This book chapter (from “Salamanders: Methods and Protocols”) provides an alternative protocol to the in situ hybridization of amphibians. While this protocol “has been utilized for decades in axolotls, it has been challenging to implement consistently across tissues.” The authors here present an approach combining a hybridized chain reaction (HCR) with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), providing a method with “a considerably higher signal to background” noise ratio. See the full list of authors and read this book chapter, “Hybridization Chain Reaction Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (HCR-FISH) in Ambystoma mexicanum Tissue,” at the publisher’s page.
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Raising (regenerative) axolotls for experimental uses
Mexican axolotls are capable of regenerating “amputated limbs and injured body parts,” and their study is valuable to both stem cell and regeneration research. From “Salamanders: Methods and Protocols”, this book chapter by professor James Monaghan and PhD. Anastasia Yandulskaya presents the conditions for raising lab-healthy axolotls, how to breed them, and how to maintain their environment. Read this book chapter, “Establishing a New Research Axolotl Colony,” at the publisher’s page.
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‘Plasmon-Induced Enhanced Light Emission and Ultrafast Carrier Dynamics in a Tunable Molybdenum Disulfide-Gallium Nitride Heterostructure’
“The effect of localized plasmon on the photoemission and absorption in hybrid molybdenum disulfide-Gallium nitride (MoS2-GaN) heterostructure has been studied. Localized plasmon induced by platinum nanoparticles was resonantly coupled to the bandedge states of GaN to enhance the UV emission from the hybrid semiconductor system. The presence of the platinum nanoparticles also increases the effective absorption and the transient gain of the excitonic absorption in MoS2.” Find the paper and the full list of authors in Materials.
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Handling x-rays at high speed
As x-ray lasers gain the ability to fire at ever-increasing speeds, current data systems need to increase their effectiveness to handle “these type[s] of facilities, especially for high throughput applications.” In this paper, the authors propose “a machine-learning algorithm to automatically extract” relevant data. The paper also covers “the feasibility of using this framework at high data volume.” See the full list of authors and read their research paper, “Testing the data framework for an AI algorithm in preparation for high data rate X-ray facilities,” at ArXiv.
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In emerging markets, social investments matter most
New research published in Insights @ Center for Emerging Markets demonstrates “that in emerging markets, social investments have a larger impact on financial performance than governance or environmental initiatives because they help create capabilities that more directly compensate for government failures in the provision of public goods and services.” Read the article and see the full list of authors at the Insights @ Center for Emerging Markets.
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How blockchain can solve the crises of global supply chains
Ravi Sarathy, professor of international business and strategy, writes that many of the problems facing modern global supply chains can be overcome through blockchain technology. Blockchains “enhance reliability and efficiency by providing transparent and secure tracking of goods and related digital documentation.” Find the article at the Insights @ Center for Emerging Markets.