Title
Topic
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‘Reusing Just-in-Time Compiled Code’
“Most code is executed more than once. If not entire programs then libraries remain unchanged from one run to the next. Just-in-time compilers expend considerable effort gathering insights about code they compiled many times, and often end up generating the same binary over and over again. We explore how to reuse compiled code across runs of different programs to reduce warm-up costs of dynamic languages. We propose to use speculative contextual dispatch to select versions of functions from an off-line curated code repository.” Find the paper full list of authors in the Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages.
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Associate professor of finance John Bai argues, in a new paper, says that remote work provides many of the solutions required to maintain business continuity during extreme weather events, becoming all the more common “in a warming world.”
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‘RecA Levels Modulate Biofilm Development in Acinetobacter Baumannii’
“Infections caused by Acinetobacter baumannii, a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen, are difficult to eradicate due to the bacterium’s propensity to quickly gain antibiotic resistances and form biofilms, a protective bacterial multicellular community. The A. baumannii DNA damage response (DDR) mediates the antibiotic resistance acquisition and regulates RecA in an atypical fashion; both RecALow and RecAHigh cell types are formed in response to DNA damage. The findings of this study demonstrate that the levels of RecA can influence formation and dispersal of biofilms.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Molecular Microbiology.
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‘Virtual AIVantage: Leveraging Large Language Models for Enhanced VR Interview Preparation Among Underrepresented Professionals’
“Technical interviews, a cornerstone of the hiring process for computer science (CS) jobs, often prove to be particularly stressful for individuals from underrepresented backgrounds in CS circles, including women and people of color. The heightened stress and pressure can negatively affect these individuals’ sense of belonging in CS. This paper introduces Virtual AIVantage, an innovative tool designed to address this issue by leveraging virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize technical interview preparation for underrepresented individuals in CS.” Find the paper and authors list in the Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia.
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‘Snake Robot With Tactile Perception Navigates on Large-Scale Challenging Terrain’
“Along with the advancement of robot skin technology, there has been notable progress in the development of snake robots featuring body-surface tactile perception. In this study, we proposed a locomotion control framework for snake robots that integrates tactile perception to augment their adaptability to various terrains. Our approach embraces a hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) architecture, wherein the high-level orchestrates global navigation strategies while the low-level uses curriculum learning for local navigation maneuvers.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ArXiv.
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‘No Root Store Left Behind’
“When a root certificate authority (CA) in the Web PKI misbehaves, primary root-store operators such as Mozilla and Google respond by distrusting that CA. However, full distrust is often too broad, so root stores often implement partial distrust of roots, such as only accepting a root for a subset of domains. … We propose augmenting root stores with per-certificate programs called General Certificate Constraints (GCCs) that precisely control the trust of root certificates.” Find the paper and full list of authors in the Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks.
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‘Network-Based Restoration Strategies Maximize Ecosystem Recovery’
“Redressing global patterns of biodiversity loss requires quantitative frameworks that can predict ecosystem collapse and inform restoration strategies. By applying a network-based dynamical approach to synthetic and real-world mutualistic ecosystems, we show that biodiversity recovery following collapse is maximized when extirpated species are reintroduced based solely on their total number of connections in the original interaction network. … These results suggest that it is possible to design nearly optimal restoration strategies that maximize biodiversity recovery for data-poor ecosystems.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Communications Biology.
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‘The Energy Landscape of the Ribosome’
“The ribosome is a prototypical assembly that can be used to establish general principles and techniques for the study of biological molecular machines. Motivated by the fact that the dynamics of every biomolecule is governed by an underlying energy landscape, there has been great interest to understand and quantify ribosome energetics. In the present review, we will focus on theoretical and computational strategies for probing the interactions that shape the energy landscape of the ribosome, with an emphasis on more recent studies of the elongation cycle.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Biopolymers.
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A programming language for knitters — at the industrial scale
Assistant professor of computer science Megan Hofmann has developed KnitScript, a programming language for industrial knitting machines that makes “designing knitted structures” more akin to 3D printing, paving the way for truly on-demand clothing and “fabric that changes shape.”
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‘Speculative Histories, Just Futures: From Counterfactual Artifacts to Counterfactual Actions’
“This article engages with history as a speculative space for the purpose of critically engaging with discourses around the politics of technology in [human-computer interaction]. Drawing on approaches within critical design and based on evidence from two different projects, we develop an approach, counterfactual actions, that moves beyond the creation of artifacts and towards more situated, embodied and performative engagements. … We argue that a focus on counterfactual actions supports a more relational approach to understanding the politics of socio-technical systems and infrastructures.” Find the paper and full list of authors at ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
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‘Identification of Novel Anti-Amoebic Pharmacophores From Kinase Inhibitor Chemotypes’
“Acanthamoeba species, Naegleria fowleri and Balamuthia mandrillaris are opportunistic pathogens that cause a range of brain, skin, eye and disseminated diseases in humans and animals. These pathogenic free-living amoebae (pFLA) are commonly misdiagnosed and have sub-optimal treatment regimens which contribute to the extremely high mortality rates (>90%) when they infect the central nervous system. To address the unmet medical need for effective therapeutics, we screened kinase inhibitor chemotypes against three pFLA using phenotypic drug assays involving CellTiter-Glo 2.0.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Frontiers in Microbiology.
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‘Reading Vision in Adults With Early and Intermediate Age-Related Macular Degeneration Under Mesopic and Photopic Conditions’
“Reading is involved in various daily activities that operate under a wide range of luminance levels. Rod- and cone-mediated mesopic visual function is known to be impaired even in early/intermediate age-related macular degeneration (AMD). It remains unclear whether and to what extent mesopic reading is impaired in early/intermediate AMD. Here, we assessed differences in reading vision between photopic and mesopic conditions in early/intermediate AMD and compared their performance to those in older adults with normal macular health.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Translational Vision Science & Technology.
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‘Data-Driven MRI Analysis Reveals Fitness-Related Functional Change in … Cognition Following an Exercise Intervention’
“Previous research has indicated that cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is structurally and functionally neuroprotective in older adults. However, questions remain regarding the mechanistic role of CRF on cognitive and brain health. The purposes of this study were to investigate if higher pre-intervention CRF was associated with greater change in functional brain connectivity during an exercise intervention and to determine if the magnitude of change in connectivity was related to better post-intervention cognitive performance. … Results revealed a positive correlation between pre-intervention CRF and changes in functional connectivity in the precentral gyrus.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Psychophysiology.
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‘Large Floods on the Lower Ohio River Inferred From Slackwater Deposits’
“Slackwater deposits representing past flood events provide a robust means to extend systematic gage records further back in time, place historic floods in a longer-term context, and reduce uncertainties in flood hazard analysis. The identification and application of slackwater deposits in riverine paleoflood hydrology has traditionally been limited to arid bedrock-controlled environments and periglacial environments. In this study, we utilize methods developed in humid alluvial settings and apply them to slackwater deposits, one of the first studies to do so.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment.
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‘The Skills Your Employees Need to Work Effectively With AI’
“Right now, the corporate world is in the throes of a generative AI hype cycle,” writes Nada Sanders, Distinguished Professor of supply chain management, with John D. Wood, attorney and author. “But how do [leaders] actually integrate AI with their workforce to achieve good business outcomes?” they ask. Sanders and Wood argue that the skills a workforce needs during this AI boom comes down to two categories: interpersonal skills and domain expertise.
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With NSF grant, Caracoglia will test life-size buildings against simulated tornados
“Civil and environmental engineering professor Luca Caracoglia is part of a team of researchers across nine universities who have been given a four-year, $14 million grant by the NSF to design a facility that can test tornado effects on real-life scale building models.”
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‘Evaluation of the US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub for informing pandemic response under uncertainty’
“Our ability to forecast epidemics far into the future is constrained by the many complexities of disease systems. Realistic longer-term projections may, however, be possible under well-defined scenarios that specify the future state of critical epidemic drivers. Since December 2020, the U.S. COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub (SMH) has convened multiple modeling teams to make months ahead projections of SARS-CoV-2 burden, totaling nearly 1.8 million national and state-level projections. Here, we find SMH performance varied widely as a function of both scenario validity and model calibration.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Nature Communications.
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‘Whole genome assembly and annotation of the endangered Caribbean coral Acropora cervicornis’
“Coral species in the genus Acropora are key ecological components of coral reefs worldwide and represent the most diverse genus of scleractinian corals. While key species of Indo-Pacific Acropora have annotated genomes, no annotated genome has been published for either of the two species of Caribbean Acropora. Here we present the first fully annotated genome of the endangered Caribbean staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis.” Find the paper and full list of authors at G3.
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‘Biochemical Activity of 17 Cancer-Associated Variants of DNA Polymerase Kappa Predicted by Electrostatic Properties’
“DNA damage and repair have been widely studied in relation to cancer and therapeutics. Y-family DNA polymerases can bypass DNA lesions … including some chemotherapy agents. Overexpression of the Y-family polymerase human pol kappa can result in tumorigenesis and drug resistance in cancer. This report describes the use of computational tools to predict the effects of single nucleotide polymorphism variants on pol kappa activity. Partial Order Optimum Likelihood (POOL), a machine learning method, … was used to identify amino acid residues most likely involved in catalytic activity.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Chemical Research in Toxicology.
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‘Chromatin Alternates Between A and B Compartments at Kilobase Scale for Subgenic Organization’
“Nuclear compartments are prominent features of 3D chromatin organization, but sequencing depth limitations have impeded investigation at ultra fine-scale. CTCF loops are generally studied at a finer scale, but the impact of looping on proximal interactions remains enigmatic. Here, we critically examine nuclear compartments and CTCF loop-proximal interactions using a combination of in situ Hi-C at unparalleled depth, algorithm development and biophysical modeling.” Find the paper and full list of authors at Nature Communications.
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‘Kinetics and mechanism of halide exchange in reactions of CpRu(PPh₃)₂Cl with alkyl halides’
“Halide exchange reactions between CpRu(PPh3)2Cl (1) and CBr4, CHBr3, CBr3CO2Et or CHBr2CO2Et yielding CpRu(PPh3)2Br (3) are facile and appear to proceed by a radical pair intermediate in a second order reaction. … Density functional theory calculations on potential intermediates suggests that a pathway leading to CpRu(PPh3)(Cl)(Br) is more likely than oxidative addition, which is preferred in reactions of 1 with bromoethane.” Find the paper and full list of authors at the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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Murthy receives patent for dendritic cell collection
“Devices, systems, and methods can be used for the automated production of dendritic cells (DC) from dendritic cell progenitors, such as monocytes obtained from peripheral blood, and the automated generation of immunotherapeutic products from those dendritic cells, all within a closed system. The invention makes it possible to obtain sufficient quantities of a subject’s own DC for use in preparing and characterizing vaccines, for activating and characterizing the activation state of the subject’s immune response, and to aid in preventing and/or treating cancer or infectious disease.”
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‘Multiconfigurational Photodynamics Simulations Reveal the Mechanism of Photodecarbonylations of Cyclopropenones’
“Gas-evolving photochemical reactions use light and mild conditions to access strained organic compounds irreversibly. Cyclopropenones are a class of light-responsive molecules used in bioorthogonal photoclick reactions; their excited-state decarbonylation reaction mechanisms are misunderstood due to their ultrafast (<100 femtosecond) lifetimes. We have combined multiconfigurational quantum mechanical (QM) calculations and non-adiabatic molecular dynamics (NAMD) simulations to uncover the excited-state mechanism of cyclopropenone and a photoprotected cyclooctyne-(COT)-precursor in gaseous and explicit aqueous environments.” Find the paper and full list of authors at the Royal Society of Chemistry.
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In every designed object, there is ‘a human being at the center’ — Lee Moreau’s new podcast explores just who design is for
Professor of the practice of design Lee Moreau’s new podcast, “Design As,” invites leaders in the field of design to discuss contemporary issues within their discipline and interrogate just who design belongs to or serves.
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Developing cutting-edge testing technology for 5G Open RAN
“Electrical and computer engineering principal research scientist Pedram Johari is leading a $2,000,000 project awarded by the Wireless Innovation Fund to develop a digital framework for testing 5G Open RAN systems called ‘DigiRAN: High-Fidelity Digital Twins for Interoperability, Security and Performance Testing of Open RAN Systems.’ DigiRAN is a digital framework that enables diverse, low-cost and automated testing of three core components for 5G Open RAN: interoperability, performance and security.”