PubReading

Mando Mourad

Researchers would love if they can expand time to fit in that publication, article, or review of their topic of interest; if that were true, however, there is no end to bottomless scrolling and missing the important details. PubReading would read out the abstract, results, and discussions to allow hassle-free information and a chance to create connections with like-minded individuals.

  1. 06/26/2023

    PubReading [343] - The changing career trajectories of new parents in STEM - E. Cech & M. Blair-Loy

    The gender imbalance in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields has remained constant for decades and increases the farther up the STEM career pipeline one looks. Why does the underrepresentation of women endure? This study investigated the role of parenthood as a mechanism of gender-differentiated attrition from STEM employment. Using a nationally representative 8-year longitudinal sample of US STEM professionals, we examined the career trajectories of new parents after the birth or adoption of their first child. We found substantial attrition of new mothers: 43% of women leave full-time STEM employment after their first child. New mothers are more likely than new fathers to leave STEM, to switch to part-time work, and to exit the labor force. These gender differences hold irrespective of variation by discipline, race, and other demographic factors. However, parenthood is not just a “mother’s problem”; 23% of new fathers also leave STEM after their first child. Suggesting the difficulty of combining STEM work with caregiving responsibilities generally, new parents are more likely to leave full-time STEM jobs than otherwise similar childless peers and even new parents who remain employed full time are more likely than their childless peers to exit STEM for work elsewhere. These results have implications for policymakers and STEM workforce scholars; whereas parenthood is an important mechanism of women’s attrition, both women and men leave at surprisingly high rates after having children. Given that most people become parents during their working lives, STEM fields must do more to retain professionals with children.doi/10.1073/pnas.1810862116 - 2019

    29 min
  2. 06/19/2023

    PubReading [340] - The application of human tissue for drug discovery and development - M. Clotworthy

    Human tissues are invaluable resources for pharmaceutical research. They provide information about disease pathophysiology - and equally importantly, healthy function; confirmation (or refutation) of potential drug targets; validation (or otherwise) of other models employed; and functional models for assessing drugs’ effects, whether beneficial or undesirable, in the most appropriate environment that can be replicated outside the human body. While human tissues have long been prized by pathologists in furthering our under- standing of disease processes, there is a growing appreciation of their value at the late pre-clinical stage of drug discovery. Human tissues’ potential to contribute to earlier phases of the process, before significant resources have been expended, is also now gaining recognition. Mounting concern over high rates of clinical stage drug failures mandates exploration of avenues for improving efficiency. Human tissue-based assays could play a key role in improving the translation process, as well as in moving towards stratified or personalised medicines. This editorial highlights some of the potential benefits of introducing human biosamples at each stage of the research process as a drug moves from concept to clinic. Some of the challenges with respect to obtaining tissues, minimising variability and gaining acceptance are also discussed.https://doi.org/10.1517/17460441.2012.689282 - 2012

    24 min
  3. 06/09/2023

    PubReading [336] - Foldaxanes- Rotaxane-like Architectures from Foldamers - V. Koegler, Y. Ferrand et al.

    Mechanically interlocked molecules such as rotaxanes and catenanes contain free-moving components that cannot dissociate and have enabled the investigation and control of various translational and rotational molecular motions. The architecture of pseudo-rotaxanes and of some kinetically labile rotaxanes is comparable to that of rotaxanes but their components are reversibly associated and not irreversibly interlocked. In other words, pseudo-rotaxanes may fall apart. This Account focuses on a peculiar family of rotaxane-like architectures termed foldaxanes. Foldaxanes consist of a helically folded oligomer wound around a rod-like dumbbell-shaped guest. Winding of the helix around the rod thus entails an unwinding−rewinding process that creates a kinetic barrier. It follows that foldaxanes, albeit reversibly assembled, have significant lifetimes and may not fall apart while defined molecular motions are triggered. Foldaxanes based on helically folded aromatic oligoamide hosts and oligo(alkyl carbamate) guests can be designed rationally through the inclusion of complementary binding motifs on the rod and at the inner rim of the helix so that helix length and rod length match. Single helical foldaxanes (bimolecular species) and double helical foldaxanes (trimolecular species) have thus been produced as well as poly[n]foldaxanes, in which several helices bind to long rods with multiple binding stations. When the binding stations differ and are organized in a certain sequence, a complementary sequence of different stacked helices, each matching with their binding station, can be assembled, thus reproducing in an artificial system a sort of translation process.https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.accounts.2c00050 - 2022

    43 min

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Researchers would love if they can expand time to fit in that publication, article, or review of their topic of interest; if that were true, however, there is no end to bottomless scrolling and missing the important details. PubReading would read out the abstract, results, and discussions to allow hassle-free information and a chance to create connections with like-minded individuals.