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Many cases of viral hepatitis are easily preventable if caught early; however, a lack of public awareness regarding often leads to diagnoses near the final stages of disease when it is most lethal. Thus, we wanted to understand to what extent an individual's sex, age, education and country of residence (India or Singapore) impacts disease identification. We sent out a survey and quiz to residents in India (n = 239) and Singapore (n = 130) with questions that test their knowledge and awareness of the disease. We hypothesized that older and more educated individuals would score higher because they are more experienced, but that the Indian population will not be as knowledgeable as the Singaporean population because they do not have as many resources, such as socioeconomic access to schools and accessibility to healthcare, available to them. Additionally, we predicted that there would not be any notable differences between make and females. The results revealed that the accuracy for all groups we looked at was primarily below 50%, demonstrating a severe knowledge gap. Therefore, we concluded that if more medical professionals discussed viral hepatitis during hospital visits and in schools, patients can avoid the end stages of the disease in notable cases.

The authors looked at student behaviors around disposal of face masks. The goal of the study was to bring awareness to improper mask disposal and how the resulting litter contributes to overall environmental pollution.

A bottleneck in deleting algal blooms is that current data section is manual and is reactionary to an existing algal bloom. These authors made a custom-designed Seek and Destroy Algal Mitigation System (SDAMS) that detects harmful algal blooms at earlier time points with astonishing accuracy, and can instantaneously suppress the pre-bloom algal population.

Childhood abuse has severe and lasting effects throughout an individual's life, and may even have long-term biological effects on individuals who suffer it. To learn more about the effects of abuse in childhood, Li and Yearwood analyze gene expression data to look for genes differentially expressed genes in individuals with a history of childhood abuse.

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.

The authors looked at phytoremediation, the process by which plants are used to remove pollutants from our environment, and the ability of Lemna minor to perform phytoremediation in various simulated polluted environments. The authors found that L. minor could remove pollutants from the environment and that the addition of bacteria increased this removal.

The authors test the effect of test score comparison on the self-efficacy of adolescents versus adults.

Here, seeking to better understand how facial features provide important visual cues to help convey emotions, the authors evaluated the accuracy and reaction time of participants in regards to experimental photographs where a person's eyebrows were obscured and ones where they were not. Their findings revealed that removing eyebrows resulted in a significant decrease in a participant's ability to recognize anger, with adolescents most likely to misidentify emotions.

Microplastic pollution is a pressing environmental issue, particularly in the context of its potential impacts on ecosystems and human health. In this study, we explored the ability of plants, specifically those cultivated for human consumption, to absorb microplastics from their growing medium. We found no evidence of microplastic absorption in both intact and mechanically damaged roots. This outcome suggests that microplastics larger than 10 μm may not be readily absorbed by the root systems of leafy crops such as lettuce (L. sativa).

Neuroinflammation and oxidative stress are both known to play a role in the occurrence and severity of seizures. This study tested effects of oxidative stress from seizures by evaluating the longevity, egg-laying, and electroshock resilience of C. elegans. Results revealed that oxidative stress and neuroinflammation diminish longevity and reproductivity while also increasing recovery time after seizures in C. elegans. This research can help lead to future studies and may also lead to finding new therapeutics for epilepsy.