Title
Topic
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‘Investigating the Pathway Through Which Lon Protease Regulates Cell Envelope in Acinetobacter baumannii’
“Acinetobacter baumannii is an opportunistic pathogen prevalent in hospital settings. The virulence in A. baumannii is associated with biofilms, bacterial multicellular communities embedded in bacterial produced coating that provides protection from environmental stress. Lon protease is essential in biofilm formation; in strains with Lon protease deficiency (KO), there is decreased biofilm formation along with surprising upregulation of two genes: surA1 and surA2. The protein products SurA1 and A1S_2230 (SurA2), especially SurA2, increase A. baumannii virulence through desiccation tolerance and antibiotic resistance. This project focused on identifying possible regulators of surA2 in the lon KO strain.” Find the paper and full…
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NSF award to model crystal growth
“Chemical engineering associate professor Francisco Hung, in collaboration with Erik Santiso from North Carolina State University, was awarded a $590,666 NSF grant for ‘Molecular Modeling of Solute Precipitate Nucleation in Confinement.'”
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‘Spectrally Sharp Magnetic Excitations Above the Critical Temperature in a Frustrated Weyl Semimetal’
“The rare-earth α-pyrochlore iridates are a prospective class of conducting frustrated magnets where electronic correlations, large spin-orbit coupling, and geometrical frustration interplay, leading to a rich set of magnetic and electronic phases. Despite their intriguing properties, the magnetic order and excitations in this fundamental class of topological quantum materials remain poorly understood. … We unequivocally reveal the presence of spectrally sharp, gapped magnetic excitations in Y2Ir2O7 that surprisingly persist well above the Néel transition temperature, signaling the presence of a quasi-universal regime connected to fluctuations on frustrated lattices.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Nature Commmunications.
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‘Machine Learning Photodynamics Decode Multiple Singlet Fission Channels in Pentacene Crystal’
“Crystalline pentacene is a model solid-state light-harvesting material because its quantum efficiencies exceed 100% via ultrafast singlet fission. The singlet fission mechanism in pentacene crystals is disputed due to insufficient electronic information in time-resolved experiments and intractable quantum mechanical calculations for simulating realistic crystal dynamics. Here we combine a multiscale multiconfigurational approach and machine learning photodynamics to understand competing singlet fission mechanisms in crystalline pentacene.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Nature Communications.
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‘Genetically Encoded Fluorescent Reporter for Polyamines’
“Polyamines are abundant and evolutionarily conserved metabolites that are essential for life. Dietary polyamine supplementation extends life-span and health-span. Dysregulation of polyamine homeostasis is linked to Parkinson’s disease and cancer, driving interest in therapeutically targeting this pathway. However, measuring cellular polyamine levels, which vary across cell types and states, remains challenging. We introduce a genetically encoded polyamine reporter for real-time measurement of polyamine concentrations in single living cells.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Nature Communications.
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‘Leading AI Adoption in Organizations: Introducing a Behavioral Human-Centered Approach’
“Initiatives to implement AI technologies in organizations fail at an alarming rate. We argue that leading the adoption of AI is not a simple engineering exercise but rather represents a behavioral exercise where change management principles—the process by which organizations plan, implement, and embed changes in practices—are employed. … We integrate ideas from change management with scholarship on human-centered artificial intelligence to offer a behavioral approach that accounts for the impact of AI adoption on humans at all stages of implementation and change management.” Find the paper and authors list in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction.
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‘Atomistic Characterization of Hydration-Dependent Fuel Cell Ionomer Nanostructure: Validation by Vibrational Spectroscopy’
“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. … We expect that these nanostructural characterizations of Nafion exchange sites will contribute to the development of new ionomers.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
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‘Bridging Deep Learning Force Fields and Electronic Structures With a Physics-Informed Approach’
“This work presents a physics-informed neural network approach bridging deep-learning force field and electronic structure simulations, illustrated through twisted two-dimensional large-scale material systems. The deep potential molecular dynamics model is adopted as the backbone, and the electronic structure simulation is integrated. Using Wannier functions as the basis, we categorize Wannier Hamiltonian elements based on physical principles to incorporate diverse information from a deep-learning force field model.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Computational Materials.
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‘Photolytic Activation of Ni(II)X2L Explains How Ni-Mediated Cross Coupling Begins’
“Nickel photocatalysis has recently become vital to organic synthesis, but how the Ni(II)X2L pre-catalyst (X = Cl, Br; L = bidentate ligand) becomes activated to Ni(I)XL has remained puzzling and is typically addressed on a case-by-case basis. Here, we reveal a general mechanism where light induces photolysis of the Ni(II)-X bond, either via direct excitation or triplet energy transfer.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Nature Communications.
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‘Long-Lived Zone-Boundary Magnons in an Antiferromagnet’
“Antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulators exhibit many desirable features for spintronic applications such as fast dynamics in the THz range and robustness to fluctuating external fields. However, large damping typically associated with THz magnons presents a serious challenge for THz magnonic applications. Here, we report long-lived short-wavelength zone boundary magnons in the honeycomb AFM insulator CoTiO3, recently found to host topological magnons. We find that its zone-boundary THz magnons exhibit longer lifetimes than its zone-center magnons.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Nature Communications.
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‘Why the Ethical Use of AI Matters for Your Career’
“In the contemporary digital era, innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) are profoundly transforming the business landscape. … Yet, amidst these advantages lies an ethical conundrum. Customers cherish genuine human interaction and can become quickly disillusioned when they realise they’re communicating with a bot, not a person (Ciechanowski, Przegalinska, Magnuski & Gloor, 2019). Balancing this desire for authenticity with the allure of operational efficiency poses a challenge, making it tempting for businesses to deceive customers by blurring the lines between human and machine.” Find the paper and full list of authors in European Business Review.
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Furth wins Exceptional Paper Award
“Civil and environmental engineering professor Peter Furth and his former student Milad Tahmasebi, PhD’24, civil engineering, won the Exceptional Paper Award at the 104th Annual Transportation Research Board Meeting for ‘Reducing Speeding by Removing Speeding Opportunities: Field Test of Safe Waves Traffic Signal Timing.'”
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‘A Twist on Heterotic Little String Duality’
“In this work, we significantly expand the web of T-dualities among heterotic NS5-brane theories with eight supercharges. This is achieved by introducing twists involving outer automorphisms of discrete gauge/flavor factors and tensor multiplet permutations along the compactification circle. We assemble field theory data that we propose as invariants across T-dual theories, comprised of twisted Coulomb branch dimensions, higher group structures and flavor symmetry ranks.” Find the paper and full list of authors in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
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‘Pseudouridine Reprogramming in the Human T Cell Epitranscriptome: From Primary to Immortalized States’
“Immortalized cell lines are commonly used as proxies for primary cells in human biology research. … The analysis of the 13% of sites unique to each cell type reveals that Jurkat cells contained transcripts linked to immune activation and oncogenesis, while primary T cells contained transcripts associated with calcium signaling and intracellular trafficking. We provide a list of these genes, which should be considered when using immortalized cells to study RNA modifications in immunology contexts.” Find the paper and full list of authors in RNA.
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‘Galvanotactic Directionality of Cell Groups Depends on Group Size’
“Motile cells migrate directionally in electric fields. This behavior—galvanotaxis—is important in many physiological phenomena. Individual fish keratocytes migrate to the cathode, while inhibition of PI3-Kinase (PI3K) reverses single cells to the anode. Uninhibited cell groups move to the cathode. Surprisingly, groups of PI3K-inhibited cells exhibit bidirectional behavior: Large groups move to the cathode, while small groups move to the anode. A mechanical model suggests that a tug-of-war between the outer and inner cells directs the cell groups.” Find the paper and full list of authors in Cell Biology.
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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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Hajjar receives 2025 BSCES College Educator Award
“Civil and environmental engineering Professor Jerome Hajjar was selected to receive the 2025 BSCES College Educator Award from the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers for contributions to the Northeastern University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and support of the students of Northeastern University.”
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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.'”