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1. ChAdOx1 interacts with CAR and PF4 with implications for thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome

   https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abl8213  

   Baker, Alexander T.; Boyd, Ryan J.; Sarkar, Daipayan; Teijeira-Crespo, Alicia; Chan, Chun Kit; Bates, Emily; Waraich, Kasim; Vant, John; Wilson, Eric; Truong, Chloe D.; et al (December 2021, Science Advances)

   Vaccines derived from chimpanzee adenovirus Y25 (ChAdOx1), human adenovirus type 26 (HAdV-D26), and human adenovirus type 5 (HAdV-C5) are critical in combatting the severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. As part of the largest vaccination campaign in history, ultrarare side effects not seen in phase 3 trials, including thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a rare condition resembling heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), have been observed. This study demonstrates that all three adenoviruses deployed as vaccination vectors versus SARS-CoV-2 bind to platelet factor 4 (PF4), a protein implicated in the pathogenesis of HIT. We have determined the structure of the ChAdOx1 viral vector and used it in state-of-the-art computational simulations to demonstrate an electrostatic interaction mechanism with PF4, which was confirmed experimentally by surface plasmon resonance. These data confirm that PF4 is capable of forming stable complexes with clinically relevant adenoviruses, an important step in unraveling the mechanisms underlying TTS. 

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2. Material agency with summer STEM youth designing with Micro:bits

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--42945  

   Wilson-Fetrow, M.; Svihla, V.; Hsi, S. (July 2023, Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exhibition)

   In this poster, we report results related to an NSF EEC CAREER project that characterizes framing agency, defined as making decisions and learning in the process of framing design problems. Our past studies of framing agency have relied on discourse analysis to characterize agency in talk [1-3]. However, this analytical approach, with its focus on talk, misses much about the materials in the design process, and given that design is commonly cast as a conversation with materials [4], a fuller understanding of framing agency could come from attention to material interactions. This study aimed to investigate a design setting in which materials played a consequential role, and to incorporate another analytic method to attend to the roles of materials in framing agency. Specifically, we examined ways learners negotiated their agency with materials in the context of an informal STEM camp focused on learning about the past, present, and future of radio frequency communications. 

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3. 'Poker with Play Money': Exploring Psychotherapist Training with Virtual Patients

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3757450  

   Baseman, Cynthia M; Hasan, Masum; Swinger, Nathaniel; Rauch, Sheila_A M; Hoque, Ehsan; Arriaga, Rosa I (October 2025, Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction)

   Role-play exercises are widely utilized for training across a variety of domains; however, they have many shortcomings, including low availability, resource intensity, and lack of diversity. Large language model-driven virtual agents offer a potential avenue to mitigate these limitations and offer lower-risk role-play. The implications, however, of shifting this human-human collaboration to human-agent collaboration are still largely unexplored. In this work we focus on the context of psychotherapy, as psychotherapists-in-training extensively engage in role-play exercises with peers and/or supervisors to practice the interpersonal and therapeutic skills required for effective treatment. We provide a case study of a realistic ''virtual patient'' system for mental health training, evaluated by trained psychotherapists in comparison to their previous experiences with both real role-play partners and real patients. Our qualitative, reflexive analysis generated three themes and thirteen subthemes regarding key interpersonal skills of psychotherapy, the utility of the system compared to traditional role-play techniques, and factors which impacted psychotherapist-perceived ''humanness'' of the virtual patient. Although psychotherapists were optimistic about the system's potential to bolster therapeutic skills, this utility was impacted by the extent to which the virtual patient was perceived as human-like. We leverage the Computers Are Social Actors framework to discuss human-virtual-patient collaboration for practicing rapport, and discuss challenges of prototyping novel human-AI systems for clinical contexts which require a high degree of unpredictability. We pull from the ''SEEK'' three-factor theory of anthropomorphism to stress the importance of adequately representing a variety of cultural communities within mental health AI systems, in alignment with decolonial computing. 

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4. Reconstruction with velocities

   https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1002  

   Zhu, Hong-Ming; White, Martin; Ferraro, Simone; Schaan, Emmanuel (May 2020, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

   ABSTRACT Reconstruction is becoming a crucial procedure of galaxy clustering analysis for future spectroscopic redshift surveys to obtain subper cent level measurement of the baryon acoustic oscillation scale. Most reconstruction algorithms rely on an estimation of the displacement field from the observed galaxy distribution. However, the displacement reconstruction degrades near the survey boundary due to incomplete data and the boundary effects extend to $${\sim}100\, \mathrm{Mpc}/h$$ within the interior of the survey volume. We study the possibility of using radial velocities measured from the cosmic microwave background observation through the kinematic Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect to improve performance near the boundary. We find that the boundary effect can be reduced to $${\sim}30-40\, \mathrm{Mpc}/h$$ with the velocity information from Simons Observatory. This is especially helpful for dense low redshift surveys where the volume is relatively small and a large fraction of total volume is affected by the boundary. 

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5. Nucleosynthesis with tritium

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6471/addc86  

   Aprahamian, Ani; James_deBoer, R; Görres, Joachim; Sorensen, Maxwell Q; Wiescher, Michael; Gatu-Johnson, Maria; Forrest, Chad J; Schwemmlein, Arnold (June 2025, Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics)

   Abstract This paper reports on the possible role of tritium-induced reactions of light nuclei, which may influence nucleosynthesis in short-lived environments such as the third minute of the Big Bang. They may also play a role during the emergence of the neutrino-driven shock front in core collapse supernovae or merging neutron stars at extreme densities. The production of tritium requires a very dynamic and neutron-rich environment; under such conditions tritium-induced reactions are expected to play an important role in the development of specific reaction patterns that could lead to a delayed release of neutrons influencing the associated nucleosynthesis. Here, we summarize different possible reaction sequences and discuss the strength and impact of tritium cluster resonances that occur near the tritium threshold in the respective compound systems. 

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