In healthy ecosystems, organisms interact in a relationship that helps maintain one another's existence. Stress can disrupt this interaction, compromising the survival of some of the members of such relationships. Here, the authors investigate the effect of stress on the interaction between anemones and their microbiome. Their study suggests that stress changes the composition of the surface microbiome of the anemone D. lineata, which is accompanied by an increase in mucus secretion. Future research into the composition of this stress-induced mucus might reveal useful antimicrobial properties.

Diabetes is a serious worldwide epidemic that affects a growing portion of the population. While the most common method for testing blood glucose levels involves finger pricking, it is painful and inconvenient for patients. The authors test a non-invasive method to measure glucose levels from diabetic patients, and investigate whether the method is clinically accurate and universally applicable.

As humans, not all our body organs can adequately regenerate after injury, an ability that declines with age. In some species, however, regeneration is a hallmark response that can occur limitless numbers of time throughout the life of an organism. Understanding how such species can regenerate so efficiently is of central importance to regenerative medicine. Sea urchins, unlike humans, can regenerate their spinal tissue after injury. Here the authors study the effect of a growth factor, FGF2, on sea urchin regeneration but find no conclusive evidence for a pro-regenerative effect after spinal tissue injury.

Music is an important part of the day for many of us, but what makes some combinations of sound more pleasant to the ear than others? In this article the authors investigate the role of some characteristics of sound on the perception of a pleasant vs harsh musical note.

This assessed the hypothesis that stars in wide binary systems are chemically homogeneous because of their shared origin. Abundances of the HIP 34407/HIP 34426 binary were obtained by analyzing high-resolution spectra of the system. Discrepancies found in the system’s elemental abundances might be an indicator of the presence of rocky planets around this star. Thus, the differences found in chemical composition might demonstrate limitations in the assumptions of chemical tagging.

Here based on an interest in fractals, the authors used a Julia Set Generator to consider a specific point on the Mandelbrot set with an associated coordinate. In this manner, they found that the complexity of the Mandelbrot and Julia Sets are governed by relatively simple rules, revealing that the intricate patterns of fractals can be defined by defined by simple rules and patterns.

This study aimed to predict and explain chaotic behavior in the Mandelbrot Set, one of the world’s most popular models of fractals and exhibitors of Chaos Theory. The authors hypothesized that repeatedly iterating the Mandelbrot Set’s characteristic function would give rise to a more intricate layout of the fractal and elliptical models that predict and highlight “hotspots” of chaos through their overlaps. The positive and negative results from this study may provide a new perspective on fractals and their chaotic nature, helping to solve problems involving chaotic phenomena.

This study uses neuroimaging to investigate cognitive set-shifting, a type of executive function that involves shifting from one task to another. This study tested whether cortical gray-white matter contrast in subregions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) was associated with set-shifting abilities in adults.