Inherent bias is often the unconscious driver of human behavior, and the first step towards overcoming these biases is our awareness of them. In this article the authors investigate whether race, gender or species affect the choice of charity by middle class Spaniards. Their conclusions serve as a starting point for further studies that could help charities refine their campaigns in light of these biases effectively transcending them or taking advantage of them to improve their fundraising attempts.

To address whether odor sensory circuits are organized topographically, the authors investigate whether the neuronal responses to similar odors amongst different mice mapped similarly in brain.

Natural selection shapes the evolution of all organisms, and one question of interest is whether natural selection will reach a "stopping point": a stable, ideal, value for any particular trait. Madhan and Kanagavel tackle this question by building a computer simulation of trait evolution in organisms.

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.

The authors explore how similar exoplanets are to Earth and whether they could be inhabited by humans and other living organisms.

Agricultural fertilizer application is a key innovation in providing enough food to feed the world. Fertilizers come in various types and farmers must choose which fertilizer is the best for their applications. To learn more about the effectiveness of various fertilizers, Wilson and Rasmus studied the effects of natural and chemical fertilizers on growth of basil plants.

With monitoring of climate change and the evolving properties of the atmosphere more critical than ever, the authors of this study take sea salt aerosols into consideration. These sea salt aerosols, sourced from the bubbles found at the surface of the sea, serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and are effective for the formation of clouds, light scattering in the atmosphere, and cooling of the climate. With amines being involved in the process of CCN formation, the authors explore the effects of alkylamines on the properties of sea salt aerosols and their potential relevance to climate change.

In this study, the authors seek to improve a machine learning algorithm used for image classification: identifying male and female images. In addition to fine-tuning the classification model, they investigate how accuracy is affected by their changes (an important task when developing and updating algorithms). To determine accuracy, a set of images is used to train the model and then a separate set of images is used for validation. They found that the validation accuracy was close to the training accuracy. This study contributes to the expanding areas of machine learning and its applications to image identification.

Oil spills are one of the most devastating events for marine life. Finding ways to clean up oil spills without the need for harsh chemicals could help decrease the negative impact of such spills. Here the authors demonstrate that using a combination of several biodegradable substances can effectively adsorb oil in seawater in a laboratory setting. They suggest further exploring the potential of such a combination as a possible alternative to commonly-used non-biodegradable substances in oil spill management.

Because humans live in societies, they may feel social pressure to conform to majority opinions. This follow-up study explores whether teenagers are likely to change their opinions to match others’, particularly in ambiguous situations.