Multicenter clinical trials are essential for evaluating interventions but often face significant challenges in study design, site coordination, participant recruitment, and regulatory compliance. To address these issues, the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences established the Trial Innovation Network (TIN). The TIN offers a scientific consultation process, providing access to clinical trial and disease experts who provide input and recommendations throughout the trial’s duration, at no cost to investigators. This approach aims to improve trial design, accelerate implementation, foster interdisciplinary teamwork, and spur innovations that enhance multicenter trial quality and efficiency. The TIN leverages resources of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, complementing local capabilities at the investigator’s institution. The Initial Consultation process focuses on the study’s scientific premise, design, site development, recruitment and retention strategies, funding feasibility, and other support areas. As of 6/1/2024, the TIN has provided 431 Initial Consultations to increase efficiency and accelerate trial implementation by delivering customized support and tailored recommendations. Across a range of clinical trials, the TIN has developed standardized, streamlined, and adaptable processes. We describe these processes, provide operational metrics, and include a set of lessons learned for consideration by other trial support and innovation networks.

North Carolina growers have long struggled to control Italian ryegrass, and recent research has confirmed that some Italian ryegrass biotypes have become resistant to nicosulfuron, glyphosate, clethodim, and paraquat. Integrating alternative management strategies is crucial to effectively control such biotypes. The objectives of this study were to evaluate Italian ryegrass control with cover crops and fall-applied residual herbicides and investigate cover crop injury from residual herbicides. This study was conducted during the fall/winter of 2021–22 in Salisbury, NC, and fall/winter of 2021–22 and 2022–23 in Clayton, NC. The study was designed as a 3 × 5 split-plot in which the main plot consisted of three cover crop treatments (no-cover, cereal rye at 80 kg ha−1, and crimson clover at 18 kg ha−1), and the subplots consisted of five residual herbicide treatments (S-metolachlor, flumioxazin, metribuzin, pyroxasulfone, and nontreated). In the 2021–22 season at Clayton, metribuzin injured cereal rye and crimson clover 65% and 55%, respectively. However, metribuzin injured both cover crops ≤6% in 2022–23. Flumioxazin resulted in unacceptable crimson clover injury of 50% and 38% in 2021–22 and 2022–23 in Clayton and 40% in Salisbury, respectively. Without preemergence herbicides, cereal rye controlled Italian ryegrass by 85% and 61% at 24 wk after planting in 2021–22 and 2022–23 in Clayton and 82% in Salisbury, respectively. In 2021–22, Italian ryegrass seed production was lowest in cereal rye plots at both locations, except when it was treated with metribuzin. For example, in Salisbury, cereal rye plus metribuzin resulted in 39,324 seeds m–2, compared to ≤4,386 seeds m–2 from all other cereal rye treatments. In 2022–23, Italian ryegrass seed production in cereal rye was lower when either metribuzin or pyroxasulfone were used preemergence (2,670 and 1,299 seeds m–2, respectively) compared with cereal rye that did not receive an herbicide treatment (5,600 seeds m–2). cereal rye (Secale cereale L.) and crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum L.)

Two studies were conducted in 2022 and 2023 near Rocky Mount and Clayton, NC, to determine the optimal granular ammonium sulfate (AMS) rate and application timing for pyroxasulfone-coated AMS. In the rate study, AMS rates included 161, 214, 267, 321, 374, 428, and 481 kg ha−1, equivalent to 34, 45, 56, 67, 79, 90, and 101 kg N ha−1, respectively. All rates were coated with pyroxasulfone at 118 g ai ha−1 and topdressed onto 5- to 7-leaf cotton. In the timing study, pyroxasulfone (118 g ai ha−1) was coated on AMS and topdressed at 321 kg ha−1 (67 kg N ha−1) onto 5- to 7-leaf, 9- to 11-leaf, and first bloom cotton. In both studies, weed control and cotton tolerance to pyroxasulfone-coated AMS were compared to pyroxasulfone applied POST and POST-directed. The check in both studies received non-herbicide-treated AMS (321 kg ha−1). Before treatment applications, all plots (including the check) were maintained weed-free with glyphosate and glufosinate. In both studies, pyroxasulfone applied POST was most injurious (8% to 16%), while pyroxasulfone-coated AMS resulted in ≤4% injury. Additionally, no differences in cotton lint yield were observed in either study. With the exception of the lowest rate of AMS (161 kg ha−1; 79%), all AMS rates coated with pyroxasulfone controlled Palmer amaranth ≥83%, comparably to pyroxasulfone applied POST (92%) and POST-directed (89%). In the timing study, the application method did not affect Palmer amaranth control; however, applications made at the mid- and late timings outperformed early applications. These results indicate that pyroxasulfone-coated AMS can control Palmer amaranth comparably to pyroxasulfone applied POST and POST-directed, with minimal risk of cotton injury. However, the application timing could warrant additional treatment to achieve adequate late-season weed control.

A general procedure is provided for comparing correlation coefficients between optimal linear composites. The procedure allows computationally efficient significance tests on independent or dependent multiple correlations, partial correlations, and canonical correlations, with or without the assumption of multivariate normality. Evidence from some Monte Carlo studies on the effectiveness of the methods is also provided.

The multivariate asymptotic distribution of sequential Chi-square test statistics is investigated. It is shown that: (a) when sequential Chi-square statistics are calculated for nested models on the same data, the statistics have an asymptotic intercorrelation which may be expressed in closed form, and which is, in many cases, quite high; and (b) sequential Chi-square difference tests are asymptotically independent. Some Monte Carlo evidence on the applicability of the theory is provided.

This paper provides a generalization of the Procrustes problem in which the errors are weighted from the right, or the left, or both. The solution is achieved by having the orthogonality constraint on the transformation be in agreement with the norm of the least squares criterion. This general principle is discussed and illustrated by the mathematics of the weighted orthogonal Procrustes problem.

An experiment was conducted in 2022 and 2023 near Rocky Mount and Clayton, NC, to evaluate residual herbicide-coated fertilizer for cotton tolerance and Palmer amaranth control. Treatments included acetochlor, atrazine, dimethenamid-P, diuron, flumioxazin, fluometuron, fluridone, fomesafen, linuron, metribuzin, pendimethalin, pyroxasulfone, pyroxasulfone + carfentrazone, S-metolachlor, and sulfentrazone. Each herbicide was individually coated on granular ammonium sulfate (AMS) and top-dressed at 321 kg ha−1 (67 kg N ha−1) onto 5- to 7-leaf cotton. The check plots received the equivalent rate of nonherbicide-treated AMS. Before top-dress, all plots (including the check) were treated with glyphosate and glufosinate to control previously emerged weeds. All herbicides except metribuzin resulted in transient cotton injury. Cotton response to metribuzin varied by year and location. In 2022, metribuzin caused 11% to 39% and 8% to 17% injury at the Clayton and Rocky Mount locations, respectively. In 2023, metribuzin caused 13% to 32% injury at Clayton and 73% to 84% injury at Rocky Mount. Pyroxasulfone (91%), pyroxasulfone + carfentrazone (89%), fomesafen (87%), fluridone (86%), flumioxazin (86%), and atrazine (85%) controlled Palmer amaranth ≥85%. Pendimethalin and fluometuron were the least effective treatments, resulting in 58% and 62% control, respectively. As anticipated, early season metribuzin injury translated into yield loss; plots treated with metribuzin yielded 640 kg ha−1 and were comparable to yields after linuron (790 kg ha−1) was used. These findings suggest that with the exception of metribuzin, residual herbicides coated onto AMS may be suitable and effective in cotton production, providing growers with additional modes of action for late-season control of multiple herbicide–resistant Palmer amaranth.

We conducted a systematic review of the medical, nursing, forensic, and social science literature describing events and processes associated with what happens after a traumatic death in the socio-cultural context of largely Western and high-income societies. These include death notification, why survivors choose to view or not view the body, forensic practices affecting viewing the body, alternatives to viewing, and social and cultural practices following the death. We also describe how elements of these processes may act to increase or lessen some of the negative cognitive and emotional consequences for both survivors and providers. The information presented is applicable to those who may be faced with traumatic deaths, including those who work in medicine, nursing, and law enforcement, as well as first responders, forensic investigators, funeral directors, and the families of the deceased.

This editorial considers the value and nature of academic psychiatry by asking what defines the specialty and psychiatrists as academics. We frame academic psychiatry as a way of thinking that benefits clinical services and discuss how to inspire the next generation of academics.

Plant growth requires the integration of internal and external cues, perceived and transduced into a developmental programme of cell division, elongation and wall thickening. Mechanical forces contribute to this regulation, and thigmomorphogenesis typically includes reducing stem height, increasing stem diameter, and a canonical transcriptomic response. We present data on a bZIP transcription factor involved in this process in grasses. Brachypodium distachyon SECONDARY WALL INTERACTING bZIP (SWIZ) protein translocated into the nucleus following mechanostimulation. Classical touch-responsive genes were upregulated in B. distachyon roots following touch, including significant induction of the glycoside hydrolase 17 family, which may be unique to grass thigmomorphogenesis. SWIZ protein binding to an E-box variant in exons and introns was associated with immediate activation followed by repression of gene expression. SWIZ overexpression resulted in plants with reduced stem and root elongation. These data further define plant touch-responsive transcriptomics and physiology, offering insights into grass mechanotranduction dynamics.

Large-scale geological structures have controlled the long-term development of the bed and thus the flow of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). However, complete ice cover has obscured the age and exact positions of faults and geological boundaries beneath Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier, two major WAIS outlets in the Amundsen Sea sector. Here, we characterize the only rock outcrop between these two glaciers, which was exposed by the retreat of slow-flowing coastal ice in the early 2010s to form the new Sif Island. The island comprises granite, zircon U-Pb dated to ~177–174 Ma and characterized by initial ɛNd, 87Sr/86Sr and ɛHf isotope compositions of -2.3, 0.7061 and -1.3, respectively. These characteristics resemble Thurston Island/Antarctic Peninsula crustal block rocks, strongly suggesting that the Sif Island granite belongs to this province and placing the crustal block's boundary with the Marie Byrd Land province under Thwaites Glacier or its eastern shear margin. Low-temperature thermochronological data reveal that the granite underwent rapid cooling following emplacement, rapidly cooled again at ~100–90 Ma and then remained close to the Earth's surface until present. These data help date vertical displacement across the major tectonic structure beneath Pine Island Glacier to the Late Cretaceous.

The proposal of improving reproducibility by lowering the significance threshold to 0.005 has been discussed, but the impact on conducting clinical trials has yet to be examined from a study design perspective. The impact on sample size and study duration was investigated using design setups from 125 phase II studies published between 2015 and 2022. The impact was assessed using percent increase in sample size and additional years of accrual with the medians being 110.97% higher and 2.65 years longer respectively. The results indicated that this proposal causes additional financial burdens that reduce the efficiency of conducting clinical trials.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) has surveyed the sky at multiple frequencies as part of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS). The first two RACS observing epochs, at 887.5 (RACS-low) and 1 367.5 (RACS-mid) MHz, have been released (McConnell, et al. 2020, PASA, 37, e048; Duchesne, et al. 2023, PASA, 40, e034). A catalogue of radio sources from RACS-low has also been released, covering the sky south of declination $+30^{\circ}$ (Hale, et al., 2021, PASA, 38, e058). With this paper, we describe and release the first set of catalogues from RACS-mid, covering the sky below declination $+49^{\circ}$. The catalogues are created in a similar manner to the RACS-low catalogue, and we discuss this process and highlight additional changes. The general purpose primary catalogue covering 36 200 deg$^2$ features a variable angular resolution to maximise sensitivity and sky coverage across the catalogued area, with a median angular resolution of $11.2^{\prime\prime} \times 9.3^{\prime\prime}$. The primary catalogue comprises 3 105 668 radio sources, including those in the Galactic Plane (2 861 923 excluding Galactic latitudes of $|b|<5^{\circ}$), and we estimate the catalogue to be 95% complete for sources above 2 mJy. With the primary catalogue, we also provide two auxiliary catalogues. The first is a fixed-resolution, 25-arcsec catalogue approximately matching the sky coverage of the RACS-low catalogue. This 25-arcsec catalogue is constructed identically to the primary catalogue, except images are convolved to a less-sensitive 25-arcsec angular resolution. The second auxiliary catalogue is designed for time-domain science and is the concatenation of source lists from the original RACS-mid images with no additional convolution, mosaicking, or de-duplication of source entries to avoid losing time-variable signals. All three RACS-mid catalogues, and all RACS data products, are available through the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (https://research.csiro.au/casda/).

We present and evaluate the prospects for detecting coherent radio counterparts to gravitational wave (GW) events using Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) triggered observations. The MWA rapid-response system, combined with its buffering mode ($\sim$4 min negative latency), enables us to catch any radio signals produced from seconds prior to hours after a binary neutron star (BNS) merger. The large field of view of the MWA ($\sim$$1\,000\,\textrm{deg}^2$ at 120 MHz) and its location under the high sensitivity sky region of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) detector network, forecast a high chance of being on-target for a GW event. We consider three observing configurations for the MWA to follow up GW BNS merger events, including a single dipole per tile, the full array, and four sub-arrays. We then perform a population synthesis of BNS systems to predict the radio detectable fraction of GW events using these configurations. We find that the configuration with four sub-arrays is the best compromise between sky coverage and sensitivity as it is capable of placing meaningful constraints on the radio emission from 12.6% of GW BNS detections. Based on the timescales of four BNS merger coherent radio emission models, we propose an observing strategy that involves triggering the buffering mode to target coherent signals emitted prior to, during or shortly following the merger, which is then followed by continued recording for up to three hours to target later time post-merger emission. We expect MWA to trigger on $\sim$$5-22$ BNS merger events during the LVK O4 observing run, which could potentially result in two detections of predicted coherent emission.

The ACT Network was funded by NIH to provide investigators from across the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Consortium the ability to directly query national federated electronic health record (EHR) data for cohort discovery and feasibility assessment of multi-site studies. NIH refunded the program for expanded research application to become “Evolve to Next-Gen ACT” (ENACT). In parallel, the US Food and Drug Administration has been evaluating the use of real-world data (RWD), including EHR data, as sources of real-world evidence (RWE) for its regulatory decisions involving drug and biological products. Using insights from implementation science, six lessons learned from ACT for developing and sustaining RWD/RWE infrastructures and networks across the CTSA Consortium are presented in order to inform ENACT’s development from the outset. Lessons include intentional institutional relationship management, end-user engagement, beta-testing, and customer-driven adaptation. The ENACT team is also conducting customer discovery interviews with CTSA hub and investigators using Innovation-Corps@NCATS (I-Corps™) methodology for biomedical entrepreneurs to uncover unmet RWD needs. Possible ENACT value proposition hypotheses are presented by stage of research. Developing evidence about methods for sustaining academically derived data infrastructures and support can advance the science of translation and support our nation’s RWD/RWE research capacity.

The superposition of data sets with internal parametric self-similarity is a longstanding and widespread technique for the analysis of many types of experimental data across the physical sciences. Typically, this superposition is performed manually, or recently through the application of one of a few automated algorithms. However, these methods are often heuristic in nature, are prone to user bias via manual data shifting or parameterization, and lack a native framework for handling uncertainty in both the data and the resulting model of the superposed data. In this work, we develop a data-driven, nonparametric method for superposing experimental data with arbitrary coordinate transformations, which employs Gaussian process regression to learn statistical models that describe the data, and then uses maximum a posteriori estimation to optimally superpose the data sets. This statistical framework is robust to experimental noise and automatically produces uncertainty estimates for the learned coordinate transformations. Moreover, it is distinguished from black-box machine learning in its interpretability—specifically, it produces a model that may itself be interrogated to gain insight into the system under study. We demonstrate these salient features of our method through its application to four representative data sets characterizing the mechanics of soft materials. In every case, our method replicates results obtained using other approaches, but with reduced bias and the addition of uncertainty estimates. This method enables a standardized, statistical treatment of self-similar data across many fields, producing interpretable data-driven models that may inform applications such as materials classification, design, and discovery.