The NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) was established to support translational research that spans the entire TS Continuum, with the goal of bridging the gap between preclinical biomedical research and real-world applications to advance treatments to patients more quickly. In 2018, the Translational Science Training (TST) TL1 Program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio implemented new strategies to better include and encourage research more broadly across the TS Continuum, including the addition of postdoctoral scientists and a clinically trained Program Co-Director, expansion of team science and community engagement programming, and targeted trainee recruitment from schools of nursing, dentistry, and allied health, in addition to medicine. The objective of this bibliometric analysis was to determine if the program exhibited a more diverse mix of T-types after the adjustments made in 2018. The TST/TL1 Program experienced a shift in T-type, from mostly T0 (preclinical) to more T3/T4 (clinical implementation/public health) research, after new strategies were implemented. This supports the conclusion that strategic programmatic adjustments by an NCATS-funded predoctoral training program resulted in outcomes that better align with NCATS priorities to develop Trainees who contribute across the entire TS Continuum.

The commercialization of medical devices and biotechnology products is characterized by high failure rates and long development lead times particularly among start-up enterprises. To increase the success rate of these high-risk ventures, the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) and University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) partnered to create key academic support centers with programs to accelerate entrepreneurship and innovation in this industry. In 2008, UML and UMMS founded the Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2), which is a business and technology incubator that provides business planning, product prototyping, laboratory services, access to clinical testing, and ecosystem networking to medical device and biotech start-up firms. M2D2 has three physical locations that encompass approximately 40,000 square feet. Recently, M2D2 leveraged these resources to expand into new areas such as health security, point of care technologies for heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders, and rapid diagnostics to detect SARS-CoV-2. Since its inception, M2D2 has vetted approximately 260 medical device and biotech start-up companies for inclusion in its programs and provided active support to more than 80 firms. This manuscript describes how two UMass campuses leveraged institutional, state, and Federal resources to create a thriving entrepreneurial environment for medical device and biotech companies.

Gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars encode information about nuclear matter at extreme densities, inaccessible by laboratory experiments. The late inspiral is influenced by the presence of tides, which depend on the neutron star equation of state. Neutron star mergers are expected to often produce rapidly rotating remnant neutron stars that emit gravitational waves. These will provide clues to the extremely hot post-merger environment. This signature of nuclear matter in gravitational waves contains most information in the 2–4 kHz frequency band, which is outside of the most sensitive band of current detectors. We present the design concept and science case for a Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory (NEMO): a gravitational-wave interferometer optimised to study nuclear physics with merging neutron stars. The concept uses high-circulating laser power, quantum squeezing, and a detector topology specifically designed to achieve the high-frequency sensitivity necessary to probe nuclear matter using gravitational waves. Above 1 kHz, the proposed strain sensitivity is comparable to full third-generation detectors at a fraction of the cost. Such sensitivity changes expected event rates for detection of post-merger remnants from approximately one per few decades with two A+ detectors to a few per year and potentially allow for the first gravitational-wave observations of supernovae, isolated neutron stars, and other exotica.

This research communication addresses the hypothesis that, during the summer in the subtropics, natural tree shade helps to improve milk functional characteristics such as stability and acidity. Sixteen Holstein lactating cows were enrolled. The study consisted of three periods (pre-stress, heat stress and post-stress) based on allocating grazing cows into two treatments (with and without access to shade during the Heat Stress period). Overall THI during the trial was (mean ± se) 76.0 ± 3.4. Access to shade prevented the heat stress-related decrease in milk stability both in the ethanol and in the coagulation time test, as well as maintained milk acidity within an acceptable range (14 to 18°D).