Here, recognizing the significant growth of electronic cigarettes in recent years, the authors sought to test a hypothesis that three main components of the liquid solutions used in e-cigarettes might affect lung cancer cell viability. In a study performed by exposing A549 cells, human lung cancer cells, to different types of smoke extracts, the authors found that increasing levels of nicotine resulted in improve lung cancer cell viability up until the toxicity of nicotine resulted in cell death. They conclude that these results suggest that contrary to conventional thought e-cigarettes may be more dangerous than tobacco cigarettes in certain contexts.

Numerous organisms, including the marine bacterium Aliivibrio fischeri, produce light. This bioluminescence is involved in many important symbioses and may one day be an important source of light for humans. In this study, the authors investigated ways to increase bioluminescence production from the model organism E. coli.

The authors experimented with several commonly available alkaline spices (turmeric, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon) to study their antimicrobial properties, hypothesizing that alkaline spices would have antimicrobial activity. Results showed a zone of inhibition of bacterial growth, with the largest zone of inhibition being around turmeric, followed by cayenne pepper, and the smallest around cinnamon. These results are impactful, as common alkaline spices generally do show antibacterial properties and both bacteriostatic and bactericidal effects correlated with degree of alkalinity.

In this study, the authors looked at a proto-oncogene, KRAS, and searched for molecules that are predicted to be able to bind to the inactive form of KRAS. They found that a modified version of Irbesartan, a derivative of benzimidazole, showed the best binding to inactive KRAS.

Muons, one of the fundamental elementary particles, originate from the collision of cosmic rays with atmospheric particles and are also generated in particle accelerator collisions. In this study, Samson et al analyze the factors that influence muon flux and lifetime using Cosmic Ray Muon Detectors (CRMDs). Overall, the study suggests that water can be used to decrease muon flux and that scintillator orientation is a potential determinant of the volume of data collected in muon decay studies.

In this article, the authors investigate the effects of fungus E. muscae on fruit fly behavior. More specifically, they investigate whether this fungus affects olfaction. Their findings contribute to a broader set of studies seeking to understand how host's central nervous systems can be affected by infections.

In their paper, Kreiman et al. examined what it takes for an artificial neural network to be able to perform well on a new task without forgetting its previous knowledge. By comparing methods that stop task forgetting, they found that longer training times and maintenance of the most important connections in a particular task while training on a new one helped the neural network maintain its performance on both tasks. The authors hope that this proof-of-principle research will someday contribute to artificial intelligence that better mimics natural human intelligence.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, with a 10% 5-year survival rate. The authors studied various dosages of TPEN and zinc in combination with Chloroquine and Gemcitabine as treatments to reduce cell proliferation. Results showed that when combined with Chloroquine and Gemcitabine, zinc and TPEN both significantly lowered cell proliferation compared to Gemcitabine, suggesting a synergistic effect that resulted in a more cytotoxic treatment. Further research and clinical trials on this topic are needed to determine whether this could be a viable treatment for pancreatic cancer.

In a common high school experiment to measure friction coefficients, a weighted mass attached to a spring scale is dragged across a surface at a constant velocity. While the constant velocity is necessary for an accurate measurement, it can be difficult to maintain and this can lead to large errors. Here, the authors designed a new experiment to measure friction coefficients in the classroom using only static force and show that their method has a lower standard deviation than the traditional experiment.

In this article the authors looked at different attributes of apps within the Google Play store to determine how those may impact the overall app rating out of five stars. They found that review count, amount of storage needed and when the app was last updated to be the most influential factors on an app's rating.