Does the overuse of plastic in Japan poses an ecological risk to marine species and their consumers? Using visual and chemical dissection, all fish in this study were found to have microplastics present in their gastrointestinal tract, including two species that are typically eaten whole in Japan. Overall, these results are concerning as previous studies have found that microplastics can carry persistent organic pollutants. It is presumed that the increasing consumption of microplastics will have negative implications on organ systems such as the liver, gut, and hormones.

Farmers will need to increase crop yields to feed the world's growing population efficiently. The authors here investigate the effects of growing corn in the presence or absence of ragweed, an invasive weed found in many fields and gardens. Surprisingly, the authors found that corn grown in the presence of weeds grew taller and were more productive than corn that had weeds removed. This may help gardeners rethink the necessity of weeding, and may point a way to improve farm yields in the future.

In this study, the authors examined how Sri Lankan Americans (SLAs) view racial issues in the U.S. The main hypothesis is that SLAs, as a minority in the U.S., are supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement and its political goal, challenging the common notion that SLAs are anti-Black. The study found that a majority of SLAs believe the U.S. has systemic racism, favor BLM, and favor affirmative action. IT also found that Tamil SLAs have more favorable views of BLM and affirmative action than Sinhalese SLAs.

The authors investigated an important parasite-host relationship between the raccoon roundworm and the raccoon to understand how parasite prevalence is affected by location. They found that the parasite infection was more prevalent in raccoons found closer to human dwellings, though the number of roundworm eggs was not significantly different. These results are important human health, since roundworm infection is lethal to humans and can be transmitted from raccoons to humans - the authors suggest that more research into this parasite and awareness of its prevalence is needed to prevent disease.

Palermo et al. examined the effect of group size on drinking habits of college and high school students. The authors found that both high school and college students tended to consume the most alcohol in group sizes of 4 or more, independent of how frequently they drink. They also found that the proportion of college students that drink is nearly twice the proportion of high school students that drink. This study supports previous findings that underage drinking happens in large groups and suggests that effective intervention in underage drinking would be at the group level.

The authors compare nutritional content of foods found in Western versus Asian grocery stores to determine whether one cultural diet is healthier than the other.

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.

In this study, potential physiological effects of Red 40 food dye, found in many different food products, are tested using Daphnia magna, a small freshwater crustacean.

The authors looked at the effect of monetary vs. food incentives on math test performance. They found that financial incentives did increase student performance, but not necessarily food incentives.

In this study, the authors study features of exoplanet 189733 b. This exoplanet, or planets that orbit stars other than the Sun, is found in the HD star system. Using a DSLR camera, they constructed a high caliber exoplanet transit detection tracker to study the orbital periods, radial velocity, and photometry of 189733 b. They then compared results from their system to data collected by other high precision studies. What they found was that their system produced results supporting previously published studies. These results are exciting results from the solar system demonstrating the importance of validating radial velocity and photometry data using high-precision studies.