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The influence of implicit social pressure on prosocial behavior of adolescents

Carroll et al. | Dec 13, 2021

The influence of implicit social pressure on prosocial behavior of adolescents

In this study the authors sought to understand the influence of implicit social pressure on prosocial behavior (voluntary acts that benefit someone else) in adolescents age 12–19. They considered how participants divided money between themselves and four teammate they did a school project with. Despite being shown examples of how to divide money (social pressure), their results showed that both boys and girls were unaffected by prosocial, neutral, and antisocial pressures.

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Reimagize – a digital card-based roleplaying game to improve adolescent girls’ body image

Kumar et al. | Oct 04, 2021

Reimagize – a digital card-based roleplaying game to improve adolescent girls’ body image

Reimagize, a role-playing with decision-making, was conjured, implementing social psychological concepts like counter-stereotyping and perspective-taking. As the game works implicitly to influence body image, it even counters image issues beyond personal body dissatisfaction. This study explored whether a digital role-playing card game, incorporating some of the most common prejudices of body image (like size prejudice, prejudices from the media, etc.) as identified by a digital survey/questionnaire completed by Indian girls aged 11-21, could counter these issues and reduce personal body dissatisfaction.

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Zinc-related Treatments Combined with Chloroquine and Gemcitabine for Treating Pancreatic Cancer

Ma et al. | Sep 11, 2021

Zinc-related Treatments Combined with Chloroquine and Gemcitabine for Treating Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, with a 10% 5-year survival rate. The authors studied various dosages of TPEN and zinc in combination with Chloroquine and Gemcitabine as treatments to reduce cell proliferation. Results showed that when combined with Chloroquine and Gemcitabine, zinc and TPEN both significantly lowered cell proliferation compared to Gemcitabine, suggesting a synergistic effect that resulted in a more cytotoxic treatment. Further research and clinical trials on this topic are needed to determine whether this could be a viable treatment for pancreatic cancer.

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Analysis of Patterns in the Harmonics of a String with Artificially Enforced Nodes

Jain et al. | Jan 28, 2021

Analysis of Patterns in the Harmonics of a String with Artificially Enforced Nodes

This study examines the higher harmonics in an oscillating string by analyzing the sound produced by a guitar with a spectrum analyzer. The authors mathematically hypothesized that the higher harmonics in the series of the directly excited 2nd harmonic contain the alternate frequencies of the fundamental series, the higher harmonics of the directly excited 3rd harmonic series contain every third frequency of fundamental series, and so on. To test the hypotheses, they enforced artificial nodes to excite the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th harmonics directly, and analyzed the resulting spectrum to verify the mathematical hypothesis. The data analysis corroborates both hypotheses.

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Modeling the effects of acid rain on bacterial growth

Shah et al. | Nov 17, 2020

Modeling the effects of acid rain on bacterial growth

Acid rain has caused devastating decreases in ecosystems across the globe. To mimic the effect of acid rain on the environment, the authors analyzed the growth of gram-negative (Escherichia coli) and gram-positive (Staphylococcus epidermidis) bacteria in agar solutions with different pH levels. Results show that in a given acidic environment there was a significant decrease in bacterial growth with an increase in vinegar concentration in the agar, suggesting that bacterial growth is impacted by the pH of the environment. Therefore, increased levels of acid rain could potentially harm the ecosystem by altering bacterial growth.

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