Here the authors strive to remedy the financial and mechanical deficiencies in current prosthetics by building a simple, noninvasive vibratory sensory feedback system into an inexpensive constructed 3D-printed prosthetic arm. They find that this simple feedback system has the potential to enhance feedback performance at a less cost.

Enzyme chemotaxis is a thermodynamic phenomenon in which enzymes move along a substrate concentration gradient towards regions with higher substrate concentrations and can be used to steer nanovehicles towards targets along natural substrate concentrations. In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a gradient of tau protein forms in the bloodstream. Tau protein is a substrate of the enzyme CDK5, which catalyzes the phosphorylation of tau protein and can travel using chemotaxis along tau protein gradients to increasing concentrations of tau and amyloid-beta proteins. The authors hypothesized that CDK5 would be able to overcome these barriers of Brownian motion and developed a quantitative model using Michaelis-Menten kinetics to define the necessary parameters to confirm and characterize CDK5’s chemotactic behavior to establish its utility in drug delivery and other applications.

As levels of food waste continue to rise, it is essential to find improved techniques of prolonging the shelf life of produce. The authors aimed to find a simple, yet effective, method of slowing down spoilage in tomatoes. Linear regression analysis revealed that the tomatoes soaked salt water and not dried displayed the lowest correlation between time and spoilage, confirming that this preparation was the most effective.

The authors analyzed biosolids from five Wisconsin wastewater treatment plants and suggest using KBr pellet FTIR as a simple and rapid method to start characterizing P species in biosolids.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is characterized by impulsivity, hyperactivity, and inattention. The authors hypothesized that people with ADHD would display more inattentional blindness in perceptually simple tasks and less inattentional blindness in perceptually complex tasks. The results indicate that there is no significant correlation between ADHD and inattentional blindness in either type of task.

In this study, the authors test the effect that the tilt angle of a solar panel has on the amount of energy it generates. This investigation highlights a simple way that people can harvest renewable energy more efficiently and effectively.

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.

Hemani et al. tackled the problem of rampant hospital waste by implementing staff training to help inform hospital workers about proper waste disposal. The authors observed a significant increase in proper waste disposal after the training, showing that simple strategies, such as in-person classroom training and posters, can have a profound effect on limiting improper waste handling.

Glioblastoma is a brain cancer caused by the presence of a fast-growing, malignant tumor in the brain. As of now, this cancer is universally lethal due to lack of efficacious treatment options. C-C chemokine receptor 1 (CCR1) is a G-protein coupled receptor that controls chemotaxis, the movement of cells in response to chemical stimuli. This research aims to synthesize potential CCR1 antagonists by coupling carboxylic acids with a triazole core. We synthesized these compounds using a simple carboxylic acid coupling and confirmed the identity of the final compounds using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.

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.