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.
In this study, the ability of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi to limit the growth of an agricultural weed Cirsium arvense is tested. This has important implications for developing natural herbicides.
This study follows the process of single-cloning and the growth of a homogeneous cell population in a superficial environment over the course of six weeks with the end goal of showing which of five tumor growth models commonly used to predict heterogeneous cancer cell population growth (Exponential, Logistic, Gompertz, Linear, and Bertalanffy) would also best exemplify that of homogeneous cell populations.
Polylactic acid (PLA) is a bio-based, compostable plastic that is comparable in cost to petroleum-based plastics. This study aims to evaluate the effects of UV treatment and mechanical chopping on the degradation of PLA. Based on their findings, the authors propose an alternative PLA degradation process that may be more time and energy efficient than current processes.
Industrial process are designed to optimize speed, energy use and quality. Some steps involve the translation of product-filled barrels, how far and fast this happens depends on the properties of the product within. This article investigates such properties on a mini-scale, where the roll of bead size, texture and material on the distance travelled by a cylindrical capsule is investigated.
In the modern world, communication and mobility are no longer obstacles. A natural consequence is that people from all over the world are mixing like never before and national identity can no longer be determined simply by a person's appearance or manner of speech. In this article, the authors study how a person's accent interferes with the perception of a their national identity and proposes ways to eliminate such biases.
The lexical decision task is designed to test aspects of vocabulary retrieval from short-term and long-term memory by prompting the subject to differentiate between words and non-words. From this task, researchers can determine the effects of certain stimuli on linguistic processing. Numerous studies have investigated the effects of music on various cognitive capacities, like memory and vocabulary. In the current study, we hypothesized that participants would show greater accuracy rates on the lexical decision task when exposed to a selected piece of classical music while completing the task, as compared to completing the task in silence. We tested this hypothesis on a group of 25 participants who completed the lexical decision task once in silence and once while listening to Beethoven's “Moonlight Sonata, 1st Movement”. The results suggest a positive association between the effects of classical background music and improved accuracy. Our results indicate that listening to certain types of music may enhance linguistic processes such as reading and writing. Further research with a larger group of participants is necessary to better understand the association between music and linguistic processing abilities.
Naturally occurring neuroactive alkaloids are often studied for their potential to treat Neurological diseases. This team of students study Rivastigmine, a potent cholinesterase inhibitor that is a synthetic analog of physostigmine, which comes from the Calabar bean plant Physostigma venenosum. By comparing the effects of optimized synthetic analogs to the naturally occurring alkaloid, they determine the most favorable analog for inhibition of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), the enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) to terminate neuronal transmission and signaling between synapses.
Here in an effort to better understand how our brains process and remember different categories of information, the authors assessed working memory capacity using an operation span task. They found that individuals with higher working memory capacity had higher overall higher task accuracy regardless of the type of category or the type of visual distractors they had to process. They suggest this may play a role in how some students may be less affected by distracting stimuli compared to others.
Berberine, a natural product alkaloid, has been shown to exert biological activity via in situ production of singlet oxygen when photo irradiated. Berberine utilizes singlet oxygen in its putative mechanism of action, wherein it forms an activated complex with DNA and photosensitizes triplet oxygen to singlet oxygen to specifically oxidize guanine residues, thereby halting cell replication and leading to cell death. This has potential application in photodynamic therapy, alongside other such compounds which also act as photosensitizers and produce singlet oxygen in situ. The quantification of singlet oxygen in various photosensitizers, including berberine, is essential for determining their photosensitizer efficiencies. We postulated that the singlet oxygen produced by photoirradiation of berberine would be superior in terms of singlet oxygen production to the aforementioned photosensitizers when irradiated with UV light, but inferior under visible light conditions, due to its strong absorbance of UV wavelengths.