While serving as an immediate address for psychological safety and stability, psychological first aid (PFA) currently lacks the incorporation of triage. Without triage, patients cannot be prioritized in correspondence to condition severity that is often called for within emergency conditions. To disentangle the relevance of a potential triage system to PFA, the authors of this paper have developed a method to quantify resilience - a prominent predictor of the capability to recover from a disaster. With this resilience index, they have quantified resilience of differing age, race, and sex demographics to better inform the practice of PFA and potential demographic prioritization via a triage system.

In this study, the authors investigated the biological mechanism underlying the actions of a traditional medicinal plant, Astragalus membranaceus. Using C. elegans as an experimental model, they tested the effects of AM root on heat stress responses. Their results suggest that AM root extract may enhance the activity of endogenous pathways that mediate cellular responses to heat stress.

Recently, e-cigarette usage has been increasing rapidly. Previous research has found that adverse
childhood experiences (ACEs) are correlated to cigarette usage. However, there is limited data exploring if ACEs affect vaping. Therefore, in this work, we investigated the effects of ACEs on e-cigarette usage and hypothesize that witnessing vaping in the house and facing ACEs would increase e-cigarette usage while education on the dangers of vaping would decrease e-cigarette usage. We found that different types of ACEs had different correlations with e-cigarette usage and that education on the dangers of vaping had no effect on e-cigarette usage.

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.

Many of us take our vision for granted, but rarely do we measure how well we can see. In this study, the authors investigate the ability of people of different ages to read progressively fainter letters in dark light. They find that the ability to see in dim light drops drastically after age 30. The ability to read fainter letters worsens after age 30 as well. These findings should help inform lighting decisions everywhere from restaurants to road signs.

In this work, the authors sought to provide an original experiment to investigate the conflict over whether males or females tend to exhibit greater accuracy or confidence in their memories. By using an online portal to obtain a convenience sample, the authors found that their results suggest that though males tend to be more confident regarding their memories, they may in fact remember fewer details. The authors suggest that these findings merit further research before making systematic changes regarding crime scene recall settings.

In this study, the authors address potential reasons why employees may voluntarily resign. This is in response to the currently observed economic trend The Great Resignation. Through analysis of federal and local government data along with survey results from Fairfax County, they concluded that adding additional benefits will help companies retain talented empolyees.

Sweet potatoes are one of the most common starches in Taiwan, and sweet potato peels hold significant potential to make biodegradable plastics which can alleviate the environmental impact of conventional petroleum-based plastics. In this paper, Tsai et al created starch-based bioplastics derived from sweet potato peels and manipulated the amount of added glycerol to alter the plastic’s strength and flexibility properties. Their results indicated that higher concentrations of glycerol yield more malleable plastics, providing insights into how recycled agricultural waste material might be used to slow down the rate of pollution caused by widespread production of conventional plastics.

Antibiotics are oftentimes used to treat mastitis (infection of the mammary gland) in dairy cows. Regulations require that milk from these cows be discarded until the infection has cleared and antibiotic residues are no longer detectable in the cow's milk. These regulations are in place to protect consumers and to help prevent the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria. In this study, the authors test milk samples from 10 milk suppliers in the Greensboro, NC to see if they contain detectable levels of antibiotic residues.

There have been several issues concerning the water quality in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in the past few years. This study, we collected 28 samples from 6 districts of Ulaanbaatar to check if the water supply quality met the standards of the World Health Organization, the Environmental Protection Agency, and a Mongolian National Standard. Only three samples fully met all the requirements of the global standards. Samples in Zaisan showed higher hardness (>120 ppm) and alkalinity levels (20–200 ppm) over the other districts in the city. Overall, the results show that it is important to ensure a safe and accessible water supply in Ulaanbaatar to prevent future water quality issues.