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This unique research study evaluated the potential use of the flatworm, brown planaria (Dugesia tigrine), as an alternative model for teratogenicity testing. In this study, we exposed amputated planaria to varying concentrations of a known teratogen, vitamin A (retinol), for approximately 2 weeks, and evaluated multiple parameters including the formation of blastema and eyes. The results from this study demonstrated that high concentrations of retinol caused defects in head and eye formation in regenerating planaria, with similarities to vitamin A related teratogenicity findings in mammals. Based on these results, regenerating brown planaria are a promising alternative model for teratogenicity testing, which can potentially be paradigm shifting as it can reduce cost, time, and pregnant animal use in research.

Overwatering and underwatering grass are widespread issues with environmental and financial consequences. This study developed an accessible method to assess grass water use efficiency (WUE) combining smartphone imaging with open access color unmixing analysis. The method can be applied in automated irrigation systems or apps, providing grass WUE assessment for regular consumer use.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are missing important appointments because they are viewed as nonessential, possibly including children's pediatric dentist appointments. This study aims to determine how the COVID-19 pandemic has effected parents' willingness to allow children to visit pediatric dental practices and what safety measures would make them feel more comfortable visiting the dentist. The authors found a weak positive correlation between parents' unwillingness to allow their child to visit the dentist, however overall anxiety towards visiting the dentist during the pandemic was low.

This study's goal was to identify the Mach numbers for which electrostatic drag and heat transfer manipulation would be most applicable inside the stratosphere. The experiments were conducted using computational fluid dynamics software. The study demonstrated that, on average, higher Mach speeds resulted in a considerably higher potential decrease in density. The study highlights that further research on the surface charge method is warranted to explore higher hypersonic speeds within the stratosphere.

Understanding the techniques used to improve the adhesion strength of the epoxy resin is important especially for consumer applications such as repairing car parts, bonding aluminum sheeting, and repairing furniture or applications within the aviation or civil industry. Selleys Araldite epoxy makes specific strength claims emphasizing that the load or weight that can be supported by the adhesive is 72 kg/cm². Nguyen and Clarke aimed to test the strength claims of Selley’s Araldite Epoxy by gluing two steel adhesion surfaces: a steel tube and bracket. Results showed that there is a lack of consideration by Selleys for adhesion loss mechanisms and environmental factors when accounting for consumer use of the product leading to disputable claims.

Diagnosing of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) using tools developed in the West is challenging in the Indian setting due to a huge diversity in sociocultural and economic backgrounds. Here, the authors developed a home-based, audiovisual game app (Autest) suitable for ASD risk assessment in Indian children under 10 years of age. Ratings suggested that the tool is effective and can reduce social inhibition and facilitate assessment. Further usage and development of Autest can improve risk assessment and early intervention measures for children with ASD in India.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a type of dementia that affects more than 5.5 million Americans, and there are no approved treatments that can delay the advancement of the disease. In this work, Xu and Mitchell test the effects of various herbal extracts (bugleweed, hops, sassafras, and white camphor) on Aβ_1-40 peptide levels in human neuroblastoma cells. Their results suggest that bugleweed may have the potential to reduce Aβ_1-40 levels through its anti-inflammatory properties.

The authors looked at how students performed on standardized tests when they were taught material via memorization vs. conceptual based approaches.

The causal set theory (CST) is a theory of the small-scale structure of spacetime, which provides a discrete approach to describing quantum gravity. Studying the properties of causal sets requires methods for constructing appropriate causal sets. The most commonly used approach is to perform a random sprinkling. However, there are different methods for sprinkling, and it is not clear how each commonly used method affects the results. We hypothesized that the methods would be statistically equivalent, but that some noticeable differences might occur, such as a more uniform distribution for the sub-interval sprinkling method compared to the direct sprinkling and edge bias compensation methods. We aimed to assess this hypothesis by analyzing the results of three different methods of sprinkling. For our analysis, we calculated distributions of the longest path length, interval size, and paths of various lengths for each sprinkling method. We found that the methods were statistically similar. However, one of the methods, sub-interval sprinkling, showed some slight advantages over the other two. These findings can serve as a point of reference for active researchers in the field of causal set theory, and is applicable to other research fields working with similar graphs.

Dust accumulation on solar panels can reduce electricity output by 20–50%, posing a major challenge for solar energy collection. Instead of altering panel design, we explored a simpler approach by modifying surface energy through nanotexturing, predicting that hydrophobic surfaces would repel both water and dust. This study found that treating glass and silicone surfaces with potassium hydroxide (KOH) for 13 and 10 minutes, respectively, created optimal nanotextures (445 nm for glass, 205 nm for silicone), significantly reducing dirt accumulation and improving solar energy capture.