The authors looked at the primary structure of lignin peroxidase in an attempt to identify mutations that would improve both the stability and solubility of the peroxidase protein. The goal is to engineer peroxidase enzymes that are stable to help break down polymers, such as PVC, into monomers that can be reused instead of going to landfills.
The authors looked at the effect of music therapy on visually impaired youth. They found that culturally relevant curricula is an important consideration while also showing that broadly music therapy enhances working memory, emotional well-being and inhibitory control.
It can be challenging for the general public to understand data on medical risk. Weseley-Jones and Mordechai tackle this issue by conducting a survey to assess people's skill and comfort with understanding medical risk information in percentage and frequency formats.
The authors use molecular modeling to test analogs of the stearoyl-coenzyme A desaturase 1 (SCD1) inhibitor MF-438 with implications for future development of Parkinson's disease therapeutics.
Image credit: Chunduri, Srinivas and McMahan, 2024.
Collisions of heavy ions, such as muons result in jets and noise. In high-energy particle physics, researchers use jets as crucial event-shaped observable objects to determine the properties of a collision. However, many ionic collisions result in large amounts of energy lost as noise, thus reducing the efficiency of collisions with heavy ions. The purpose of our study is to analyze the relationships between properties of muons in a dimuon collision to optimize conditions of dimuon collisions and minimize the noise lost. We used principles of Newtonian mechanics at the particle level, allowing us to further analyze different models. We used simple Python algorithms as well as linear regression models with tools such as sci-kit Learn, NumPy, and Pandas to help analyze our results. We hypothesized that since the invariant mass, the energy, and the resultant momentum vector are correlated with noise, if we constrain these inputs optimally, there will be scenarios in which the noise of the heavy-ion collision is minimized.
The authors looked at the antibacterial effects of oregano and star anise essential oils against E. coli or S. epidermis. They found that oregano oil showed antibacterial activity against both E. coli or S. epidermis, and that star anise oil had a larger zone of inhibition in E. coli than tetracycline, a conventional antibiotic.
Here, seeking a way to convert the vast quantity of seawater to drinking water, the authors investigated the purification of seawater to drinking water through electrodialysis. Using total dissolved solids (TDS) as their measure, they found that electrodialysis was able to produce deionized water with TDS values under the acceptable range for consumable water.
The energy conservation in a system of objects in collision depends on the elasticity of the objects and environmental factors such as air resistance. One system that relies heavily on elasticity is the Newton’s Cradle. We aimed to determine the extent to which these adhesives serve to mitigate or worsen the chaotic movements and elastic collisions.