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This study compares different methods for cooking vegetables to determine which retain iron and ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, levels the most.

Gun violence has been a serious issue in the South Side of Chicago for a long time. To intervene, regulators have passed legislation they hoped to curb -if not completely eradicate- the issue. However, there is little analysis done on how effective the various laws have been at reducing gun violence. Here the authors explore the association between firearm purchase laws passed between 1993-2018 and the incidence of gun homicide in Chicago's South Side. Their analysis suggests that some laws have been more effective than others, while some might have exacerbated the issue. However, they do not consider other contributing factors, which makes it difficult to prove causation without further investigation.

Two dams in Santa Clara County were evaluated for water and soil nitrate levels in order to determine whether nitrification rates were higher upstream than downstream of the dam. This could indicate a detrimental effect of dams on the nitration cycle in the environment.

This study's goal was to identify the Mach numbers for which electrostatic drag and heat transfer manipulation would be most applicable inside the stratosphere. The experiments were conducted using computational fluid dynamics software. The study demonstrated that, on average, higher Mach speeds resulted in a considerably higher potential decrease in density. The study highlights that further research on the surface charge method is warranted to explore higher hypersonic speeds within the stratosphere.

In this article, the authors look into what is already known about the factor affecting longevity and determine the importance of behavioral factors including alcohol consumption, smoking, and obesity on longevity. The authors quantify data from over 150 countries and, interestingly, find that the impact each factor has on longevity is at least in part dependent on the country's economic development status. Overall, they conclude that an average person’s life expectancy can increase by more than 3 years if smoking and alcohol consumption is reduced by a half and weight is decreased by 10%.

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.

Palermo et al. examined the effect of group size on drinking habits of college and high school students. The authors found that both high school and college students tended to consume the most alcohol in group sizes of 4 or more, independent of how frequently they drink. They also found that the proportion of college students that drink is nearly twice the proportion of high school students that drink. This study supports previous findings that underage drinking happens in large groups and suggests that effective intervention in underage drinking would be at the group level.

The authors examined the potential psychological and physiological benefits of yoga for African American high school students who attended a rigorous college preparatory program - they found that the perceived stress levels of yoga participants decreased 13% compared to the control group, though no significant changes in physiology were noted.

This study aimed to obtain an optimal non-antibiotic method to suppress the growth of pathogenic bacteria within the body. The two-fold purpose of this project was to determine which combination of bacteria would result in the most biofilm formation and then to assess the effect of ayurvedic plant extracts on the biofilm. The results show that the addition of a plant extract can affect the biofilm growth of a bacteria combination. The applications of this study can be used to design probiotic supplements with added beneficial plant extracts.

The authors assessed the atmospheric and oceanic parameters necessary for tidally-locked exoplanets to be habitable.