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In this study, the authors investigated whether water usage changed in São Paulo during the COVID-19 quarantine and explored reasons why.

With monitoring of climate change and the evolving properties of the atmosphere more critical than ever, the authors of this study take sea salt aerosols into consideration. These sea salt aerosols, sourced from the bubbles found at the surface of the sea, serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and are effective for the formation of clouds, light scattering in the atmosphere, and cooling of the climate. With amines being involved in the process of CCN formation, the authors explore the effects of alkylamines on the properties of sea salt aerosols and their potential relevance to climate change.

To address whether odor sensory circuits are organized topographically, the authors investigate whether the neuronal responses to similar odors amongst different mice mapped similarly in brain.

Growing climate concerns have intensified research into zero-emission transportation fuels, notably hydrogen. Hydrogen is considered a clean fuel because its only major by-product is water. This project analyzes how hydrogen compares to kerosene as a commercial aircraft fuel with respect to cost, CO2 emissions, and flight range.

In this study, the authors engineer a cost-effective and bio-friendly water purification system using limestone, denitrifying bacteria, and sulfate-reducing bacteria. They evaluated its efficacy with samples from Eastern PA industrial sites.

In this study, the authors investigate a potential case of cross antibiotic-resistance. Using swabs from an individual who received long-term treatments of azithromycin, they addressed the question of whether any bacteria in this individual might develop resistance to not only azithromycin, but also other antibiotics with similar structures. This study cleverly addresses the important issue of antibiotic resistance from a new and thoughtful approach.

The most common atopic disease of the upper respiratory tract is allergic rhinitis. It is defined as a chronic inflammatory condition of nasal mucosa due to the effects of one or more allergens and is usually a long-term problem. The purpose of our study was to test the efficiency of apitherapy in allergic rhinitis healing by the application of honey bee pollen. Apitherapy is a branch of alternative medicine that uses honey bee products. Honey bee pollen can act as an allergen and cause new allergy attacks for those who suffer from allergic rhinitis. Conversely, we hoped to prove that smaller ingestion of honey bee pollen on a daily basis would desensitize participants to pollen and thus reduce the severity of allergic rhinitis.

In this study, the authors test whether providing a larger dataset of glass transition temperatures (T_g) to train the machine-learning platform Polymer Genome would improve its accuracy. Polymer Genome is a machine learning based data-driven informatics platform for polymer property prediction and T_g is one property needed to design new polymers in silico. They found that training the model with their larger, curated dataset improved the algorithm's T_g, providing valuable improvements to this useful platform.

This study aimed to determine if confinement affects associative learning in chickens. The research found that the difference in time lapsed before chickens began to consume cottage cheese before and after confinement was significant. These results suggest that confinement distresses chickens, as it impairs associative learning without inducing confusion.

In this study, the authors investigate the effects of sodium levels on blood pressure, one of the most common medical problems worldwide. They used a simulated blood vessel constructed from dialysis tubing to carefully analyze pressure changes resulting from various levels of sodium in the external solution. They found that when the sodium concentration in the simulated blood vessel was higher than the external fluid, internal pressure increased, while the reverse was true when the sodium concentration was lower than in the surrounding environment. These results highlight the potential for sodium concentration to have a significant effect on blood pressure in humans by affecting the rate of osmosis across the boundaries of actual blood vessels.