Title
Topic
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‘Pulcherriminic Acid is a Signal Involved in Gene Regulation in Bacillus subtilis Biofilms’
“Biofilms are ubiquitous in nature and represent a key adaptive behavior among bacteria in response to environmental changes. … During biofilm development, B. subtilis produces pulcherriminic acid, a cyclic dipeptide that chelates ferric iron extracellularly, leading to the production of pulcherrimin, a reddish pigment. While pulcherrimin has been shown to have bacteriostatic effects against other microbes by reducing iron availability, the functions of its precursor, pulcherriminic acid, remain under-studied. In this project, we investigate the role of pulcherriminic acid as a potential signal for gene regulation in B. subtilis biofilms.” Find the paper and authors list in Journal of Biological…
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‘Constrained Liquidity Provision in Currency Markets
“We devise a simple model of liquidity demand and supply to study dealers’ liquidity provision in currency markets. Drawing on a globally representative data set of currency trading volumes, we show that at times when dealers’ intermediation capacity is constrained the cost of liquidity provision increases disproportionately relative to dealer-intermediated volume. … Using various econometric approaches, we show that this nonlinear effect of dealer constraints on market liquidity primarily stems from a reduction in the elasticity of liquidity supply, rather than changes in liquidity demand.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Journal of Financial Economics.
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‘Atomistic Characterization of Hydration-Dependent Fuel Cell Ionomer Nanostructure’
“The development of Nafion alternatives for fuel cells and electrolyzers requires a fundamental understanding of hydration-dependent ion-exchange site acid/base chemistry. We present here reactive force field (ReaxFF) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of Nafion at varying molar water/ion-exchange-site ratios (λ), which we correlate to our experimental and density functional theory-based vibrational spectra.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
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‘Superclustering with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and Dark Energy Survey. II. Anisotropic Large-scale Coherence in Hot Gas, Galaxies, and Dark Matter’
“Statistics that capture the directional dependence of the baryon distribution in the cosmic web enable unique tests of cosmology and astrophysical feedback. We use constrained oriented stacking of thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (tSZ) maps to measure the anisotropic distribution of hot gas 2.5–40 Mpc away from galaxy clusters embedded in massive filaments and superclusters.” Find the paper and full list of authors in The Astrophysical Journal.
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‘Topological Characteristics and Bulk-Boundary Correspondence in the Orbital Hall Effect’
“The orbital Hall effect (OHE) is attracting interest due to its fundamental science implications and potential applications in orbitronics and spintronics. Unlike the spin Hall effect, the connection between the OHE and band topology is not well understood. Here we present an approach for understanding the OHE based on analyzing the projected orbital angular momentum (POAM) spectrum.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Physical Review B.
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‘Age-Related Changes in Mesopic Reading Vision Across Adulthood’
“Reading is indispensable for daily activities such as reading books, menus, and food labels, occurring under a wide range of luminance conditions from mesopic (dim light) to photopic (daylight). Despite its significance, there has been limited attention on age-related changes in mesopic reading vision. The current study aims to investigate how mesopic reading vision changes across adulthood.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science.
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‘What Makes a Theory of Consciousness Unscientific?’
“Theories of consciousness have a long and controversial history. One well-known proposal — integrated information theory — has recently been labeled as ‘pseudoscience’, which has caused a heated open debate. Here we discuss the case and argue that the theory is indeed unscientific because its core claims are untestable even in principle.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Nature Neuroscience.
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‘A Phosphorylation Signal Activates Genome-Wide Transcriptional Control by BfmR’
“The nosocomial pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii is a major threat to human health. The sensor kinase-response regulator system, BfmS-BfmR, is essential to multidrug resistance and virulence in the bacterium and represents a potential antimicrobial target. Important questions remain about how the system controls resistance and pathogenesis. Although BfmR knockout alters expression of >1000 genes, its direct regulon is undefined. Moreover, how phosphorylation controls the regulator is unclear. Here, we address these problems by combining mutagenesis, ChIP-seq, and in vitro phosphorylation to study the functions of phospho-BfmR.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Nucleic Acids Research.
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‘Binuclear Ruthenium Complex Linker Length Tunes DNA Threading Intercalation Kinetics’
“Binuclear ruthenium complexes have been investigated for potential DNA-targeted therapeutic and diagnostic applications. Studies of DNA threading intercalation, in which DNA basepairs must be broken for intercalation, have revealed means of optimizing a model binuclear ruthenium complex to obtain reversible DNA-ligand assemblies with the desired properties of high affinity and slow kinetics. Here, we used single-molecule force spectroscopy to study a binuclear ruthenium complex with a longer semirigid linker relative to the model complex.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Biophysical Journal.
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‘Evolution of High-Order Van Hove Singularities Away From Cupratelike Band Dispersions and its Implications for Cuprate Superconductivity’
“We discuss the evolution of high-order Van Hove singularities (hoVHSs) that carry faster-than logarithmic divergences over a wide range of parameters in cupratelike electronic band dispersions. Numerical and analytic results give insight into the quantized value of the VHS power-law exponent 𝑝𝑉 and the transition between hoVHSs with different values of 𝑝𝑉. … Our study supports the idea that superconductivity in the cuprates occurs near a crossover between two different competing orders (antiferromagnetism and the density wave associated with the hoVHS), which is why high-temperature superconductivity is so rare.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Physical Review…
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‘Inglorious Sufferers: Motivational Factors and Moral Foundations Shape Compassionate and Helping Reactions Toward Suffering Norm Transgressors’
“While previous research shows that people’s reactions to others’ suffering can vary, it remains unclear how these responses differ for targets who have previously transgressed, and which factors drive these changes. In two studies (total N = 899), this paper experimentally investigates how compassionate and helping reactions toward a suffering transgressor change depending upon: (a) the target’s motivation (altruistic vs egoistic vs control) for the transgression (Study 1); (b) the nature of the transgression in terms of moral foundation (Care vs Fairness) of the disrespected (vs respected) norm (Study 2).” Find the paper and full list of authors in Motivation and Emotion.
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‘Holographic View of Mixed-State Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases in Open Quantum Systems’
“We establish a holographic duality between -dimensional mixed-state symmetry-protected topological (mSPT) phases and -dimensional subsystem symmetry-protected topological (SSPT) states. Specifically, we show that the reduced density matrix of the boundary layer of a -dimensional SSPT state with subsystem symmetry and global symmetry corresponds to a -dimensional mSPT phase with strong and weak symmetries. Conversely, we demonstrate that the wave function of an SSPT state can be constructed by replicating the density matrix of the corresponding lower-dimensional mSPT phase.” Find the paper and full list of authors in PRX Quantum.
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Patent for efficient computation
“Electrical and computer engineering professor Edmund Yeh was awarded a patent for ‘Network and Method for Servicing a Computation Request.'”
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‘Affective Abstraction Predicts Variation in Alexithymia, Depression, and Autism Spectrum Quotient’
“Affective abstraction refers to how people conceptualize affective states in terms of category-level representations that generalize across specific situations (e.g., “fear” as evoked by heights, predators, and haunted houses). Here, we develop a novel task for assessing affective abstraction and test its relations with trait alexithymia, depression, and autism spectrum quotient. In a preregistered online study, participants completed a set of tasks in which they matched a cue image with one of two probe images based on similarity of affective experience.” Find the paper and full list of authors in APA PsycNet.
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‘Classification of Infant Sleep-Wake States From Natural Overnight In-Crib Sleep Videos’
“Infant sleep is critical for healthy development, and disruptions in sleep patterns can have profound implications for infant brain maturation and overall well-being. Traditional methods for monitoring infant sleep often rely on intrusive equipment or time-intensive manual annotations, which hinder their scalability in clinical and research applications. We present our dataset, SmallSleeps, which includes 152 hours of overnight recordings of 17 infants aged 4–11 months captured in real-world home environments.” Find the paper and full list of authors in the 2025 IEEE Winter Applications and Computer Vision Workshops.
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‘Mental Models Matter: Conceptualizations of the Human–Nature Relationship Predict Pro-Environmental Attitudes’
“Mental models—internal, dynamic, incomplete representations of the external world that people use to guide cognitive processes…—have practical implications for predicting attitudes and behaviors across various domains. This study examines how mental models of the human–nature relationship predict pro-environmental behavioral intentions directly and indirectly as mediated through anthropocentric and biocentric environmental attitudes. To address these aims, participants were asked about mental model components of the human–nature relationship (human exceptionalism, beliefs about human impact on nature and beliefs about nature’s impact on humans), pro-environmental attitudes (biocentric and anthropocentric) and their pro-environmental behavioral intentions (protection and investment).”
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Patent for hybrid nanopore technology
“College of science and bioengineering professor Meni Wanunu received a patent for ‘Lipid-Free Anchoring of Thermophilic Bacteriophage G20c Portal Adapter Into Solid-State Nanopores.'”
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‘The Emergence and Loss of Cyclic Peptides in Nicotiana Illuminate Dynamics and Mechanisms of Plant Metabolic Evolution’
“While the class of ribosomally synthesized, post-translationally modified peptides (RiPPs) represents a major source of antibiotics and bioactive compounds, plant RiPPs are relatively understudied compared to those from microbial sources. Here, we resurrect an extinct peptide cyclase from the coyote tobacco through analysis of its functional relatives in other species. This cyclase installs a carbon–carbon macrocycle into heptapeptides, expanding the diversity of plant-derived cyclic peptides. By interconverting two distinct cyclases through targeted mutations, we illuminate how these enzymes evolve new functions.” Find the paper and full list of authors in PNAS.
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‘tRNA Kinetics on the Ribosome Depends Nonmonotonically on Intersubunit Rotation’
“To translate messenger RNA into proteins, the ribosome must coordinate a wide range of conformational rearrangements. Some steps involve individual molecules, whereas others require synchronization of multiple collective motions. … While decades of biochemical, single-molecule, and structural analysis have provided many insights into the timing of these motions, little is known about how these dynamical processes influence each other. To address this, we use molecular simulations to isolate specific interactions that allow tRNA kinetics to be controlled by subunit rotation.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Biophysical Journal.
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‘A Network Approach to White Band Disease…’
“Coral reefs are increasingly threatened by disease outbreaks, yet little is known about the genetic mechanisms underlying disease resistance. Since the 1970s, White Band Disease (WBD) has decimated the Caribbean staghorn coral Acropora cervicornis. However, 15% or more of individuals are highly disease-resistant, and the genes controlling the production of Argonaut proteins, involved in microRNA (miRNA) post-transcriptional gene silencing, are up-regulated in WBD-resistant corals. … In this study, we conducted an in situ disease transmission experiment. … We identified 67 bona fide miRNAs in A. cervicornis.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Ecology and Evolution.
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‘Discovering Ni/Cu Single-Atom Alloy as a Highly Active and Selective Catalyst for Direct Methane Conversion to Ethylene: A First-Principles Kinetic Study’
“Direct methane conversion to liquid fuels or value-added chemicals is a promising technology to utilize natural resources without resorting to further petroleum extraction. However, discovering efficient catalysts for this reaction is challenging due to either coke formation or unfavorable C–H bond activation. Herein, we design single-atom alloy (SAA) catalysts to simultaneously eliminate the above two bottlenecks based on mechanism-guided strategies.” Find the paper and full list of authors in ACS Catalysis.
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‘Mental Models Matter: Conceptualizations of the Human–Nature Relationship…’
“Mental models—internal, dynamic, incomplete representations of the external world that people use to guide cognitive processes such as reasoning, decision making, and language comprehension—have practical implications for predicting attitudes and behaviors across various domains. This study examines how mental models of the human–nature relationship predict pro-environmental behavioral intentions directly and indirectly as mediated through anthropocentric and biocentric environmental attitudes.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Sustainability.
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‘How Politics Affect Pandemic Forecasting: Spatio-Temporal Early Warning Capabilities’
“Using keyword filtering, we identified eight COVID-19-related geo-social media topics. We then utilized Chatterjee’s rank correlation to assess their early warning capability for COVID-19 cases 7 to 42 days in advance across six infection waves. … Our results highlight the need for a dynamic spatially targeted approach that accounts for both how regional geosocial media topics of interest change over time and the impact of local political ideology on their epidemiological early warning capabilities.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Frontiers in Public Health.
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Wireless beam management, now AI-drive
“Electrical and computer engineering assistant research professor Michele Polese, assistant professor Francesco Restuccia, and William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia were awarded a patent for ‘Coordination-Free mmWave Beam Management With Deep Waveform Learning.'”
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‘Advanced Deposition Methods for Mixed Metal Alloys and Hydroxides as High-Performance Catalysts for the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction’
“Alkaline water and anion-exchange membrane electrolyzers are considered leading solutions for the large-scale production of hydrogen due to their lower capital costs. In recent years, numerous hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts have been developed, primarily by alloying nickel with other transition metals. Despite these advancements, stability remains a challenge due to the low intrinsic corrosion resistance of these alloys. In this work, we present an advanced synthesis method that incorporates an amorphous copper hydroxide phase within a nickel–copper alloy using a pH-trap mechanism.” Find the paper and full list of authors in ACS Catalysis.
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‘Your Tech Team’s Biggest Risk Isn’t AI – It’s People Skills’
“In an industry where rapid technological advancements are the norm, it’s easy to assume that hard skills, like programming, data analysis, and machine learning, are the primary drivers of success. However, insights from a recent survey by Skiilify and InsightJam, “AI Won’t Replace You—But Lack of Soft Skills Might,” highlights a critical gap that could thwart the careers of even the most technically skilled professionals: the absence of durable soft skills.”