Here, seeking to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the social interactions of junior high school students, the authors surveyed students, teachers, and parents. Contrary to their initial hypotheses, the authors found positive correlation between increased virtual contact during social isolation and in-person conflict and disregard for social norms after the pandemic. While the authors identified the limitations of their study, they suggest that further research into the effect of online interactions is becoming increasingly important.
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Overcoming The Uncanny Valley Through Shared Stressful Experience with a Humanoid Robot
The "Uncanny Valley" is a phenomenon in which humans feel discomfort in the presence of objects that are almost, but not quite, human-like. In this study, the authors tested whether this phenomenon could be overcome by sharing a stressful experience with a humanoid robot. They found that human subjects more readily accepted a robot partner that they had previously shared a stressful experience with, suggesting a potential method for increasing the effectiveness of beneficial human-robot interactions by reducing the Uncanny Valley effect.
Read More...Sex differences in sleep disorders of Parkinson’s disease patients associated with a genetic risk variant
The authors use known Parkinson's disease-associated genetic variants to compare the prevalence of sleep dysfunction between males and females diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Read More...Epileptic seizure detection using machine learning on electroencephalogram data
The authors use machine learning and electroencephalogram data to propose a method for improving epilepsy diagnosis.
Read More...Protective effect of bromelain and pineapple extracts on UV-induced damage in human skin cells
In this study, the authors tested whether the compound bromelain extracted from pineapples could protect skin cells from UV damage.
Read More...Predicting the Instance of Breast Cancer within Patients using a Convolutional Neural Network
Using a convolution neural network, these authors show machine learning can clinically diagnose breast cancer with high accuracy.
Read More...Effects of Withania Somnifera on Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Type 1A in the model organism Eisenia Fetida
In this study, the authors investigate whether Eisenia Fetida nerve signal speed correlates with Withania somnifera ingestion, a possible way to protect against demyelination.
Read More...Utilizing 25-Hydroxyvitamin D3 to prevent the appearance of diabetic-like phenotypes in Drosophila melanogaster
This study aimed to assess the role of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 solution, at varying concentrations, in protecting vertical transmission of diabetic-like phenotypes. We hypothesized that the highest concentration of vitamin D solution (55 ng/mL) would be most effective in having a protective role. The results indicated that the hypothesis was partially supported; overall, all three concentrations of the vitamin D solution administered to the flies reared on HSDs had a protective effect, to varying extents.
Read More...A Data-Centric Analysis of “Stop and Frisk” in New York City
The death of George Floyd has shed light on the disproportionate level of policing affecting non-Whites in the United States of America. To explore whether non-Whites were disproportionately targetted by New York City's "Stop and Frisk" policy, the authors analyze publicly available data on the practice between 2003-2019. Their results suggest African Americans were indeed more likely to be stopped by the police until 2012, after which there was some improvement.
Read More...Comparing the Dietary Preference of Caenorhabditis elegans for Bacterial Probiotics vs. Escherichia coli.
In this experiment, the authors used C. elegans as a simple model organism to observe the impact of probiotics on the human digestive system. The results of the experiments showed that the C. elegans were, on average, most present in Chobani cultures over other tested yogurts. While not statistically significant, these results still demonstrated that C. elegans might prefer Chobani cultures over other probiotic yogurts, which may also indicate greater gut benefits from Chobani over the other yogurt brands tested.
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