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In this study, the authors investigate situations in which people make sports bets that seem to go against their better judgement. Using surveys, individuals were asked to bet on which team would win in scenarios when their home team was involved and others when they were not to determine whether fandom for a team can overshadow fans’ judgment. They found that fans bet much more on their home teams than neutral teams when their team was facing a large deficit.

Here the authors used morphological characters and DNA barcoding to identify arthropods found within a residential house. With this method they identified their species and compared them against pests lists provided by the US government. They found that none of their identified species were considered to be pests providing evidence against the misconception that arthropods found at home are harmful to humans. They suggest that these methods could be used at larger scales to better understand and aid in mapping ecosystems.

Here, the authors aimed to apply home soil testing to identify the cause of the growth differences between two lemon trees. They hypothesized that differences in physical and chemical soil characteristics were influencing differences in soil productivity and plant growth. Overall, the study demonstrated the effectiveness of home soil testing to characterize soils and help homeowners solve common gardening problems.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the authors noticed a change in the physical activity of many people, as well as a change in the type of physical activity they practice. Here, the authors used a cross-sectional survey of 150 participants from the province of Basra in Iraq. They found an overall decrease in the number of days of physical activity for participants along with an increasing proportion of at-home exercises compared to other activities that are performed inside sports clubs during the pandemic.

Minerals such as iron are essential for life, but too much of a good thing can be poisonous. Here the authors investigate the effect of iron concentrations on the growth of an aquatic plant and find that supplementing small amounts of iron can help, but adding too much can be bad for the plant. These results should help inform decisions on allowable iron concentrations in the environment, aquatic farming, and even home aquariums.

Here, the authors investigated the most efficient way to position magnets to hold the most pieces of paper on the surface of a refrigerator. They used a regression model along with an artificial neural network to identify the most efficient positions of four magnets to be at the vertices of a rectangle.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption in social interactions. In this study, the authors tested if walking a dog will change human interactions and found that walking with a dog increased social interaction.

In this study, the authors investigate the effect of remote learning (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) on sleeping habits amongst teenagers in Ohio. Using survey results, sleep habits and attitudes toward school were assessed before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the United States maintains millions of square kilometers of nature reserves to protect the biodiversity of the specimens living there, little is known about how confining these species within designated protected lands influences the genetic variation required for a healthy population. In this study, the authors sequenced genetic barcodes of insects from a recently established nature reserve, the Southwestern Riverside County Multi-Species Reserve (SWRCMSR), and a non-protected area, the Mt. San Jacinto College (MSJC) Menifee campus, to compare the genetic variation between the two populations. Their results demonstrated that the midge fly population from the SWRCMSR had fewer unique DNA barcode sequence changes than the MSJC population, indicating that the comparatively younger nature reserve's population had likely not yet established its own unique genetic drift changes.

Noise pollution negatively impacts the health and behavioral routines of humans and other animals, but the production of synthetic sound-absorbing materials contributes to harmful gas emissions into the atmosphere. The authors of this paper investigated the effectiveness of environmentally-friendly, cheap natural-fiber materials, such as jute, as replacements for synthetic materials, such as gypsum and foam, in soundproofing.