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.

Though current strategies in counterterrorism are somewhat effective, the Simultaneous Attack/Persistent Pursuit (SAPP) Theory may be superior alternative to current methods. The authors simulated five attack strategies (1 SAPP and 4 non-SAPP), and concluded that the SAPP model was significantly more effective in reducing the final number of terrorist attacks. This demonstrates the comparative advantage of utilizing the SAPP model, which may prove to be critical in future efforts in counterterrorism.

Quorum sensing (QS) is the process in which bacteria recognize and respond to the surrounding cell density, and it can be inhibited by certain antimicrobial substances. This study showed that illumination intensity data is insufficient for evaluating QS activity without proper statistical modeling. It concluded that modeling illumination intensity through time provides a more accurate evaluation of QS activity than conventional cross-sectional analysis.

This experiment assessed the effectiveness of a virtual environment as a method of exposure in the treatment of high school students’ public speaking anxiety. The results show that participants’ heartbeat was higher when they wore a VR headset than when they did not.

This study focused on finding more sustainable growing methods that reduce chemical fertilizer or water usage and can be used at the household level for garden plants. Metrics for healthy plant growth were height at first bloom, growing time, and survival rate. The Deep Water Culture (DWC) treatment for garden cress plants significantly increased the height at first bloom compared to the control group. For rates of surviving plants, the treatments had little effect on garden cress, but the Eggshell Grounds, Wick System, and DWC system groups outperformed the control group for marigolds.

Fat can be chemically altered during cooking through a process called lipid oxidation, which can have a negative impact on health. In this study, the authors measured the extracted fat in raw, fried and hard-boiled eggs and found that cooking eggs to a higher temperature resulted in a lower amount of extracted fat, indicating a greater amount of oxidized fat.

End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is a growing health concern in the United States. The authors of this study present a study of ESRD incidence over a 32-year period, providing an in-depth look at the contributions of age, race, gender, and underlying medical factors to this disease.

With an increasing older adult population and rapid advancements in technology, it is important that senior citizens learn to use new technologies to remain active in society. A variety of factors on learning were investigated through surveys of senior citizens. Older adults preferred an interactive lesson style, which also seemed to help them retain more course material.

In this study, the authors develop an architecture to implement in a cloud-based database used by law firms to ensure confidentiality, availability, and integrity of attorney documents while maintaining greater efficiency than traditional encryption algorithms. They assessed whether the architecture satisfies necessary criteria and tested the overall file sizes the architecture could process. The authors found that their system was able to handle larger file sizes and fit engineering criteria. This study presents a valuable new tool that can be used to ensure law firms have adequate security as they shift to using cloud-based storage systems for their files.

Understanding how bacteria respond to other bacteria could facilitate their ability to initiate and maintain their infectiousness. The phenomenon by which bacteria signal to each other via chemical signals is called quorum sensing, which could be targeted to deter bacterial infection in some cases if better understood. In this article, the authors study how a bacterium called V. fischeri uses quorum sensing to change bioluminescence, an easy readout that facilitates studying quorum sensing in this strain.