For centuries, fossils from the Maastrichtian type locality and adjacent quarries have provided key evidence of vertebrate diversity during the latest Cretaceous, yet until recently the Maastrichtian type area had revealed no important insights into the evolutionary history of birds, one of the world’s most conspicuous groups of extant tetrapods. With the benefit of high-resolution micro-CT scanning, two important avian fossils from the Maastrichtian type area have now been examined in detail, offering profound, complementary insights into the evolutionary history of birds. The holotype specimens of these new taxa, Janavis finalidens Benito, Kuo, Widrig, Jagt and Field, 2022, and Asteriornis maastrichtensis Field, Benito, Chen, Jagt and Ksepka, 2020, were originally collected in the late 1990s, but were only investigated in detail more than twenty years later. Collectively, Janavis and Asteriornis provide some of the best evidence worldwide regarding the factors that influenced stem bird extinction and crown bird survivorship through the Cretaceous-Palaeogene transition, as well as insights into the origins of key anatomical features of birds such as an extensively pneumatised postcranial skeleton, a kinetic palate, and a toothless beak. Asteriornis also provides scarce evidence of a Cretaceous-aged divergence time calibration within the avian crown group, while together, Janavis and Asteriornis constitute the only documented co-occurrence of crown birds and non-neornithine avialans. Here, we review key insights into avian evolutionary history provided by these discoveries from the Maastrichtian stratotype, document undescribed and newly discovered Maastrichtian fossils potentially attributable to Avialae and provide the first histological data for the holotype of Asteriornis, illustrating its skeletal maturity at the time of its death.

Wyoming bentonite, Fithian illite, and basalt from the Umtanum Formation, Washington, were treated hydrothermally at 200° to 460°C and 260 to 500 bars for 71 to 584 days. No change was detected for the bentonite and basalt, except for the loss of calcite and exchange of Ca for K in the smectite and the growth of a small amount of smectite (presumably from a glass phase) in the basalt. Calcite in the initial bentonite may have stabilized the smectite by Ca/K exchange; thus, if the latter is used as a packing material in a nuclear waste repository, limestone should be added. No change was detected in the illite samples treated <300°C; however, at 360°C, euhedral crystals of berthierine and illite grew at the expense of original illite/smectite, apparently by a solution-crystallization process. Significant changes involving the dissolution of starting phases and the formation of illite and chlorite were also detected in mixtures of basalt and bentonite at 400°C; at temperatures <400°C, no changes were observed.

The newly formed mineral phases (berthierine, illite, and chlorite) observed by transmission electron microscopy showed euhedral to subhedral shapes. These shapes are the same as those observed in hydrothermally altered sediments from the Salton Sea field and different from those from burial metamorphic environments, such as Gulf Coast sediments. The reaction mechanism is apparently the dissolution of reactants followed by the crystallization of products from solution, without conservation of structural elements of the reactants. Reactions apparently required temperatures greater than those for analogous changes in nature, suggesting that the degree of reaction was controlled by kinetics. The lack of dissolution in experimental runs at low temperatures, however, does not necessarily imply long-term stabilities of these clay minerals.

Alcohol use is influenced by genetic and environmental factors. We examined the interactive effects between genome-wide polygenic risk scores for alcohol use (alc-PRS) and social support in relation to alcohol use among European American (EA) and African American (AA) adults across sex and developmental stages (emerging adulthood, young adulthood, and middle adulthood). Data were drawn from 4,011 EA and 1,274 AA adults from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism who were between ages 18–65 and had ever used alcohol. Participants completed the Semi-Structured Assessment for the Genetics of Alcoholism and provided saliva or blood samples for genotyping. Results indicated that social support from friends, but not family, moderated the association between alc-PRS and alcohol use among EAs and AAs (only in middle adulthood for AAs); alc-PRS was associated with higher levels of alcohol use when friend support was low, but not when friend support was high. Associations were similar across sex but differed across developmental stages. Findings support the important role of social support from friends in buffering genetic risk for alcohol use among EA and AA adults and highlight the need to consider developmental changes in the role of social support in relation to alcohol use.

If water megamaser disk activity is intimately related to the circumnuclear activity from accreting supermassive black holes, a thorough understanding of the co-evolution of galaxies with their central black holes should consider the degree to which the maser production correlates with traits of their host galaxies. This contribution presents an investigation of multiwavelength nuclear and host properties of galaxies with and without water megamasers, that reveals a rather narrow multi-dimensional parameter space associated with the megamaser emission. This “goldilocks” region embodies the availability of gas, the degree of dusty obscuration and reprocessing of the central emission, the black hole mass, and the accretion rate, suggesting that the disk megamaser emission in particular is linked to a short-lived phase in the intermediate-mass galaxy evolution, providing new tools for both 1) further constraining the growth process of the incumbent AGN and its host galaxy, and 2) significantly boosting the maser disk detection by efficiently confining the 22 GHz survey parameters.

ABSTRACT IMPACT: Despite its importance in systemic diseases such as diabetes, the eye is notably difficult to examine for non-specialists; this study introduces a fully automated approach for eye disease screening, coupling a deep learning algorithm with a robotically-aligned optical coherence tomography system to improve eye care in non-ophthalmology settings. OBJECTIVES/GOALS: This study aims to develop and test a deep learning (DL) method to classify images acquired from a robotically-aligned optical coherence tomography (OCT) system as normal vs. abnormal. The long-term goal of our study is to integrate artificial intelligence and robotic eye imaging to fully automate eye disease screening in diverse clinical settings. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Between August and October 2020, patients seen at the Duke Eye Center and healthy volunteers (age ≥18) were imaged with a custom, robotically-aligned OCT (RAOCT) system following routine eye exam. Using transfer learning, we adapted a preexisting convolutional neural network to train a DL algorithm to classify OCT images as normal vs. abnormal. The model was trained and validated on two publicly available OCT datasets and two of our own RAOCT volumes. For external testing, the top-performing model based on validation was applied to a representative averaged B-scan from each of the remaining RAOCT volumes. The model’s performance was evaluated against a reference standard of clinical diagnoses by retina specialists. Saliency maps were created to visualize the areas contributing most to the model predictions. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The training and validation datasets included 87,697 OCT images, of which 59,743 were abnormal. The top-performing DL model had a training accuracy of 96% and a validation accuracy of 99%. For external testing, 43 eyes of 27 subjects were imaged with the robotically-aligned OCT system. Compared to clinical diagnoses, the model correctly labeled 18 out of 22 normal averaged B-scans and 18 out of 21 abnormal averaged B-scans. Overall, in the testing set, the model had an AUC for the detection of pathology of 0.92, an accuracy of 84%, a sensitivity of 86%, and a specificity of 82%. For the correctly predicted scans, saliency maps identified the areas contributing most to the DL algorithm’s predictions, which matched the regions of greatest clinical importance. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS: This is the first study to develop and apply a DL model to images acquired from a self-aligning OCT system, demonstrating the potential of integrating DL and robotic eye imaging to automate eye disease screening. We are working to translate this technology for use in emergency departments and primary care, where it will have the greatest impact.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are important consequences of adverse perinatal conditions such as fetal hypoxia and maternal malnutrition. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) can produce a wealth of physiological information related to the development of the heart. This review outlines the current state of CMR technologies and describes the physiological biomarkers that can be measured. These phenotypes include impaired ventricular and atrial function, maladaptive ventricular remodeling, and the proliferation of myocardial steatosis and fibrosis. The discussion outlines the applications of CMR to understanding the developmental pathways leading to impaired cardiac function. The use of CMR, both in animal models of developmental programming and in human studies, is described. Specific examples are given in a baboon model of intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). CMR offers great potential as a tool for understanding the sequence of dysfunctional adaptations of developmental origin that can affect the human cardiovascular system.

Personality and its potential role in mediating risk of psychiatric disorders and suicidality are assessed by sexual orientation, using data collected among young Swiss men (n = 5875) recruited while presenting for mandatory military conscription. Mental health outcomes were analyzed by sexual attraction using logistic regression, controlling for five-factor model personality traits and socio-demographics. Homo/bisexual men demonstrated the highest scores for neuroticism-anxiety but the lowest for sociability and sensation seeking, with no differences for aggression-hostility. Among homo/bisexual men, 10.2% fulfilled diagnostic criteria for major depression in the past 2 weeks, 10.8% for ADHD in the past 12 months, 13.8% for lifetime anti-social personality disorder (ASPD), and 6.0% attempted suicide in the past 12 months. Upon adjusting (AOR) for personality traits, their odds ratios (OR) for major depression (OR = 4.78, 95% CI 2.81–8.14; AOR = 1.46, 95% CI 0.80–2.65) and ADHD (OR = 2.17, 95% CI = 1.31–3.58; AOR = 1.00, 95% CI 0.58–1.75) lost statistical significance, and the odds ratio for suicide attempt was halved (OR = 5.10, 95% CI 2.57–10.1; AOR = 2.42, 95% CI 1.16–5.02). There are noteworthy differences in personality traits by sexual orientation, and much of the increased mental morbidity appears to be accounted for by such underlying differences, with important implications for etiology and treatment.

This study proposed the application of a novel immersed boundary method (IBM) for the treatment of irregular geometries using Cartesian computational grids for high speed compressible gas flows modelled using the unsteady Euler equations. Furthermore, the method is accelerated through the use of multiple Graphics Processing Units – specifically using Nvidia’s CUDA together with MPI - due to the computationally intensive nature associated with the numerical solution to multi-dimensional continuity equations. Due to the high degree of locality required for efficient multiple GPU computation, the Split Harten-Lax-van-Leer (SHLL) scheme is employed for vector splitting of fluxes across cell interfaces. NVIDIA visual profiler shows that our proposed method having a computational speed of 98.6 GFLOPS and 61% efficiency based on the Roofline analysis that provides the theoretical computing speed of reaching 160 GLOPS with an average 2.225 operations/byte. To demonstrate the validity of the method, results from several benchmark problems covering both subsonic and supersonic flow regimes are presented. Performance testing using 96 GPU devices demonstrates a speed up of 89 times that of a single GPU (i.e. 92% efficiency) for a benchmark problem employing 48 million cells. Discussions regarding communication overhead and parallel efficiency for varying problem sizes are also presented.

In this paper, we develop the isogeometric analysis of the dual boundary element method (IGA-DBEM) to solve the potential problem with a degenerate boundary. The non-uniform rational B-Spline (NURBS) based functions are employed to interpolate the geometry and physical function. To deal with the rank-deficiency problem due to the degenerate boundary, the hypersingular integral equation is introduced to promote the full rank for the influence matrix in the dual BEM. Finally, three numerical examples are given to verify the accuracy of our proposed method. Both circular and square domains subjected to the Dirichlet boundary condition are considered. The engineering problem containing a degenerate boundary is considered, e.g., a seepage flow problem with a sheet pile. Numerical results of the IGA-DBEM agree well with these of the exact solution and the original dual boundary element method.

Genetic predispositions play an important role in the development of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Understanding the mechanisms through which genetic risk unfolds to influence these developmental outcomes is critical for developing prevention and intervention efforts, capturing key elements of Irv's research agenda and scientific legacy. In this study, we examined the role of parenting and personality in mediating the effect of genetic risk on adolescents’ major depressive disorder and conduct disorder symptoms. Longitudinal data were drawn from a sample of 709 European American adolescents and their mothers from the Collaborative Studies on Genetics of Alcoholism. Results from multivariate path analysis indicated that adolescents’ depressive symptoms genome-wide polygenic scores (DS_GPS) predicted lower parental knowledge, which in turn was associated with more subsequent major depressive disorder and conduct disorder symptoms. Adolescents’ DS_GPS also had indirect effects on these outcomes via personality, with a mediating effect via agreeableness but not via other dimensions of personality. Findings revealed that the pattern of associations was similar across adolescent gender. Our findings emphasize the important role of evocative gene–environment correlation processes and intermediate phenotypes in the pathways of risk from genetic predispositions to complex adolescent outcomes.

Using a large and nationally representative sample, we examined how adolescents’ 5-HTTLPR genotype and perceived parenting quality independently and interactively associated with trajectories of alcohol use from early adolescence to young adulthood and whether/how gender may moderate these associations. The sample for this study included 13,749 adolescents (53.3% female; 56.3% non-Hispanic White, 21.5% Black, 16.0% Hispanic, and 6.1% Asian) followed prospectively from adolescence to young adulthood. Using growth mixture modeling, we identified four distinct trajectories of alcohol use (i.e., persistent heavy alcohol use, developmentally limited alcohol use, late-onset heavy alcohol use, and non/light alcohol use). Results indicated that the short allele of 5-HTTLPR was associated with higher risk of membership in the persistent and the late-onset heavy alcohol use trajectories. Parenting quality was associated with lower likelihoods of following the persistent heavy and the developmentally limited alcohol use trajectories but was not associated with risk of membership for the late-onset heavy drinking trajectory. 5-HTTLPR interacted with parenting quality to predict membership in the persistent heavy alcohol use trajectory for males but not for females. Findings highlighted the importance of considering the heterogeneity in trajectories of alcohol use across development and gender in the study of Gene Environment interactions in alcohol use.