Climate change is one of the most controversial challenges humans face. Here the authors investigate the dual role of clouds - to reflect incoming light away from the Earth and to reflect heat energy back toward the Earth's surface. They find that the amount of incident light energy and surface temperature decreases as the sky becomes cloudier. These results will inform longer-term studies that may compare against the amount of energy clouds reflect back toward the Earth.

Aloe vera and alpha-chymotrypsin have been used in are known for their various wound healing properties. Halder et al hypothesized that these treatments would enhance wound healing in Drosophila melanogaster larvae over 2 weeks by decreasing wound size more effectively compared to controls. The results of two of the treatment groups, Salep and Aloe vera, yielded wound sizes small enough to present a significant percent decrease when compared with the wound sizes of the control group. Their results show support that both Salep and Aloe vera were effective for enhancing wound healing in epithelial cells in D. melanogaster larvae.

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.

Vibrio fischeri is an amazing species of bacteria that lives symbiotically in the light organ of luminescent bobtail squid. In this study, authors study the strength and optimal conditions for V. fischeri light production, and assess whether this luminescence could be a natural light source comparable to manmade lighting.

Environmental disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill can be devastating to ecosystems for long periods of time. Safer, cheaper, and more effective methods of oil clean-up are needed to clean up oil spills in the future. Here, the authors investigate the ability of natural ocean algae to process crude oil into less toxic chemicals. They identify Coccochloris elabens as a particularly promising algae for future bioremediation efforts.

Using the European Space Agency’s Gaia dataset, the authors analyzed the relationship between white dwarfs’ magnitudes and proper motions. They hypothesized that older white dwarf stars may have different velocities than younger ones, possibly that stars slow down as they age. They found that the white dwarfs in the dataset were substantially redder and higher magnitude (traits traditionally associated with older stars) as compared to their non-fast counterparts.

In this article, the authors investigate whether coolant temperature affects soil cooling curves of soil with otherwise identical properties. The coolant temperature is representative of environmental temperature, and the authors hypothesized that differences in this temperature would not affect the freezing temperature of soil. Their findings validated their hypothesis providing helpful information relevant to understanding how frost heaves happen and how to predict their occurrence more accurately.

The authors survey high school students regarding the frequency of microaggressions such as name mispronunciation.

Since the discovery that thousands of different bacteria colonize our gut, many of which are important for human wellbeing, understanding the significance of balancing the different species on the human body has been intensely researched. Untangling the complexity of the gut microbiome and establishing the effect of the various strains on human health is a challenge in many circumstances, and the need for simpler systems to improve our basic understanding of microbe-host interactions seems necessary. C. elegans are a well-established laboratory animal that feed on bacteria and can thus serve as a less complex system for studying microbe-host interactions. Here the authors investigate how the choice of bacterial diet affects worm fertility. The same approach could be applied to many different outcomes, and facilitate our understanding of how the microbes colonizing our guts affect various bodily functions.

This study examined the ability of copper and copper alloy surfaces to inhibit bacterial growth, which may be help prevent healthcare-associated infections. The authors exposed two non-pathogenic strains of bacteria to different metal plates for varying degrees of time and measured bacterial growth.